


The Epistemology of Cabinets

by taylor51



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Dystopia, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2014-05-13
Packaged: 2018-01-03 13:05:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 17
Words: 62,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor51/pseuds/taylor51
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the year 2106, the civilized world has fallen after the Last Great War, a nuclear showdown which wiped out countries around the world. A chunk of Europe has survived and named itself the New Republic of Europe, and it is ruled by the strict laws of the Division. Every year, nineteen year olds are sorted into their careers.</p><p>Rose Tyler receives a special assignment - to be an assistant to a mysterious man known as the Doctor. Her job is to convince him to come out of his retirement and begin to build weapons and work as a strategist for the military. Neither the Doctor nor Rose expects to fall in love, but somehow they do.</p><p>(Will feature eventual Amy/Rory, but this isn't an Amy/Rory fic)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I am an American who watches Doctor Who. This is my attempt at English dialect. Feel free to correct me in the comments!

The Sorting begins at nine o'clock sharp. Rose has to be there by two.

Jackie spends most of her time up until then doing Rose's hair. "Remember to stand up straight and smile big. Keep your chin forward and think happy things," she fusses as she runs her comb through it and straightens Rose's pink dress.

"Muuuuuuuuuuum," Rose groans, pushing her mother's hands away. But she keeps them clasped in her as they fall and looks Jackie straight in the eye. "I'll be fine, all right? Everybody gets sorted. Stop worrying, please."

Jackie smiles slightly. "All right," she agrees, and pulls her hands away. "You look lovely," she tells Rose.

"Thank you," Rose says softly. She looks at herself in the mirror and smiles. Her long blonde hair has been artfully curled and pinned to the back of her head, courtesy of Jackie. Her knee-length pink dress fans out at the end and curls at the top like her namesake (a rose), and her feet have been squeezed into white one-inch high heels. She feels like one of the dolls that she used to dress up.

"Come on, Mum," she teases. "It's finally here, isn't it? No more waiting around for something to happen. I finally get to begin living! Isn't it wonderful?"

Jackie's face doesn't exactly scream "wonderful", but Rose doesn't let that dampen her mood. "It'll be fine, Mum. _Honestly_ ," she pleads. "Hey, remember - 'stand straight, chin up, and don't forget to smile'!"

Jackie nods and kisses her on the forehead. "Good luck, sweetheart!"

Rose gives her the thumbs up as she walks to the door of the small flat that they share and pulls it open.

She's greeted by a boy in a ridiculously puffy jacket. "What took you so long?" he complains. "We're gonna be late!"

"Good morning to you too," she says. She links elbows with him and smiles with all of her teeth. "This is it, Mickey! Today's the day!"

Mickey doesn't seem to be in as good of a mood. In fact, he looks like he's about to lose his breakfast. "Today'll be the day our lives end if you don't get a move on," he replies.

Rose rolls her eyes. "Stop worrying so much, you'll give yourself wrinkles. We've got twenty minutes," she says. But Mickey is jumpy, eyes shifting around nervously, and he puts his free arm in Rose's, like he's about to have to protect her from something. Which is ridiculous, considering that in most scenarios, _she_ ends up doing the protecting. Once they got caught sneaking onto a football pitch after hours, and while she tried to reason with the bobbies, Mickey blubbered and begged them not to send him to prison, because "I've got my entire life ahead of me!"

"Relax, will you? We're fine," says Rose as Mickey begins to yank her across the sidewalk. "Mickey, _ouch_!"

"Traffic's horrible," says Mickey. "It's always horrible on the Sorting. You're lucky if we get there on time!"

"I can walk, thanks!" Rose yanks her arm away irritably. "Mickey, calm down! We're fine, all right? Twenty minutes is more than enough time."

"Right." Mickey nods, but he speeds his pace up until Rose has to jog to stay next to him.

They make it to his car - a yellow monstrosity that doesn't embarrass him nearly as much as it should. Never mind that it's also his mother's.

Rose is about to climb in when suddenly, everything stops.

She can't really describe it, though it's happened to her a few times in her life. Nothing's shifted in the world around her. Mickey's still climbing into the driver's seat of the car and she's still walking around to the passenger's seat and it's like she's just woken up and become aware of everything around her. She can feel it, like a spider creeping up her arms and down her neck and spine and back and it tingles in her fingers and she hears this sound, like this rushing, and she can feel _everything_. Every individual atom, every particle that occupies every space, sprinting faster than she can see, whirling around and smashing into each other and buzzing and she can't see it, it's too small, but she can feel it, and right in the middle of all of it -

"Rose!" Mickey calls. "Hurry up, will you? What are you doing?"

"Nothing," says Rose automatically.

"We haven't got all day!" With that, Mickey starts the car, and Rose lowers herself into the passenger's seat gently, trying to get the ringing out of her ears.

* * * * *

Despite what she's said to Jackie, Rose doesn't have high hopes for the Sorting.

After all, her family has always ended up roughly in the same positions. Jackie's worked in a shop her entire life, and Rose's father, Pete, was a salesman for Vitex, a soft drinks company - right up until he got hit by a car and died. Rose was a baby then. She doesn't remember him at all. Jackie used to show her pictures of him, and she pretended to, more for Jackie's benefit than for her own.

But Rose has come from a long line of shop girls and salesmen, so that's what she's expecting. Even a secretarial job would be a happy surprise to her.

Mickey's car sputters to a halt in front of the District 274 Sorting Building. Most of the year, it's shut, lights off, ominous and foreboding but ultimately not a threat. But every year for one day, the light flicker on and the big, white, impossibly clean building comes to life. Every year, eighteen and nineteen year olds across the country are shoved into the Sorting Buildings of their respective districts and coughed up a few minutes later. A few minutes, and the rest of their lives have been chosen for them.

"Smith, Mickey" and "Tyler, Rose" are separated. Mickey kisses her goodbye. She lets him, even though she's slightly nervous that he's going to vomit on her. "See you when you get out," she says, and he shoots her one last look as he's ushered into his group by the bobbies.

Rose takes her place in the "S" group in front of a skinny, horse-faced girl and behind a tall, broad-shouldered boy. She plays with her hair nervously.

The time seems to tick by slower. One by one, teens are called into the building. Rose doesn't see or hear when Mickey's called - she's too far away - but she sees the "S" group diminish to no one and knows he's gone. Probably off to a pub to talk loudly about his assignment with Jeff and Barb, also both S's.

 _Bike messenger, I'll bet,_ she thinks.

The T's seem to go by even slower than the S's. _Why are there so many of us whose surnames begin with T?_ she wonders. In fact, why did some letters become more popular than others in the first place? Why did people decide to put S's and T's and R's and N's in lots of different words, but X's and Z's in only a few? There had to be a reason, she just didn't know what it was. Maybe she'd ask someone later.

"Tyler, Rose!"

She congratulates herself for not flinching or shaking as she walks up to the front door. She hands her identification slip to the grumpy woman who pricks her finger and presses the blood on to some paper. "Second door on your left," she says, and all but pushes Rose into the building.

The lights are really blinding, and the white walls don't help. Inside, Rose feels as if her skin's been stripped away and everything she thinks and feels is on display. And she can hear it again - that ringing in her ears.

"Go away," she hisses as she squints down the long hallway of white walls and white doors and finds the second one on her left.

She enters as quietly as possible, shutting the door carefully behind her. Three blank-faced, emotionless people greet her. Two men and one woman. They sit at a panel across the room from her, hands folded in front of them. It's robotic to the point that it's almost comical.

"State your name," says the woman, who appears to be a spokesperson.

"R-Rose Tyler," says Rose, and immediately curses herself for stammering. _Remember what Mum says,_ she reminds herself.

"Tyler, Rose Marion. Nineteen years old. Daughter of Peter Alan Tyler and Jacqueline Andrea Suzette Tyler, formerly Prentice. Date of birth is February 3, 2087. Please stand in the center of the room for examination."

 _Stand straight, chin up,_ she walks across the room and takes her place in the center, _and don't forget to smile!_ She forces her lips to curl upwards in a grimace that could possibly be interpreted as a smile.

"Hello," she says, and immediately wishes she hadn't.

"Rose Tyler," says the woman, completely ignoring her, "if you were in an automobile on a hill with a slope of 13 degrees with a wall at the bottom, and your automobile was rolling downwards at a pace of 47.6 miles per hour, roughly how much time would you have before the automobile collides with the wall?"

Rose stared at her. "Sorry, what?"

"Would you like me to repeat the question?"

"Um, yes, please."

"Rose Tyler, if you were in an automobile on a hill with a slope of 13 degrees with a wall at the bottom, and your automobile was rolling downwards at a pace of 47.6 miles per hour, roughly how much time would you have before the automobile collides with the wall?"

"It - it would depend on how tall the hill is - wouldn't it?" Rose is a bit uncertain. In fact, she can barely remember what the woman said. Her heart is pounding and her palms are sweaty and the bright lights are really not helping.

"Say you're trapped in a boat that's sinking because of excess weight," says the woman, "with no food, water or provisions, nor any hope of rescue. You are trapped in this boat with a scientist, a doctor, an attorney, a mechanic, a pregnant woman, an old man, a young child and a shop girl. It is decided among the group members that one person should be thrown out. Who would you choose to get rid of?"

"I - I wouldn't want to throw anybody out!" says Rose. "That's horrible! I don't know anything about these people besides where they work, and you want me to decide to kill one of them?"

"In what book does this quote come from: 'I am without passage, without light or hope, without song or poem or story to recall, but I have what nobody else seems to: hope; and onwards I shall go, and I shall hold this hope within me as if it is precious like a candle in a world of eternal dark.'"

"I don't know," says Rose.

"In what constellation does the M8 Lagoon Nebula reside?"

"I don't know," says Rose again, less confidently.

"Name three impossible things."

"I . . ." Her mind has gone blank. Three impossible things, and she can't even think of one. "I can't think of something that - that couldn't be true in some - some version of reality," she stutters. "So, yeah," she finishes lamely.

"Rose Marion Tyler, please step outside the doors of this room until we call for you to return," says the woman.

Rose steps out, heart still hammering. Her cheeks are red and she feels a little overheated, probably because she's incredibly embarrassed. She could barely remember the questions, but she knew that her answers left a lot to be desired. Going into the test, she assumed she'd at least score well in the morals category, but she'd refused to even answer it. And the three impossible things question! She'd never even heard of it before. She couldn't imagine what category it would fall under.

Three impossible things, and she couldn't even name one.

Three impossible things . . .

And suddenly, it becomes like a game to her. Pink skies inside purple hats is probably impossible, she thinks. Hearts made out of rocks and bones made out of paper. People with feet that go up to the sky and mouths that don't rise above sea level. Violin strings that play themselves, books with wings for pages, a child that cries lemon juice . . .

It's taking a while in there, she realizes. It's not supposed to take this long, is it? Jackie said it only took a minute for her, said she'd barely stepped out of the room when they were calling her back in.

"You never know, though," Rose says, mostly to placate herself. "Maybe you've got so many job opportunities that they don't know where to begin." She's fairly certain that this isn't the case, but it works in cheering her up anyways.

Leopards with black purses and shiny shoes, nail polish that recites literature to you as you apply it -

"Rose Marion Tyler," the woman's crisp voice says from the other room.

And the nerves are back. She's sweating profusely when she walks back into the room. Thank God she's wearing deodorant.

The two men are still sitting, impassive as ever, but the woman is standing, arms folded behind her back. They remain perfectly still as Rose makes her way to the center of the room. The woman waits until she's still and silent before beginning to speak.

"Your assignment is -"

Rose sucks in a breath. This is it. This is the moment that decides everything. The career she'll have for the rest of her life, or at least until she's too old to properly work. This is _it_.

"- undetermined." The woman sits back down. "Dismissed," she tacks on at the end.

Rose remains still for a moment, her brain racing to catch up. She doesn't move or speak, she barely even breathes, her lungs remaining in their perfectly contracted state like they're made out of paper and rock at the same time. For a moment, her mind simply refuses to process what she just heard.

Undetermined. Dismissed.

All the air rushes out of her lungs. She can hear the exhale: a gasp of disbelief.

"But that can't be right," she says.

"Dismissed," the woman repeats, like she couldn't possibly be bothered to worry about Rose.

"But you've got to tell me!" Rose protests.

The woman frowns at her. "You are dismissed," she says, like the reason Rose isn't leaving is because she doesn't understand.

"You've got to tell me," Rose repeats. "This is my entire future. This is your _job_. You're supposed to tell me what I am!"

"Rose Marion Tyler," the woman says, like Jackie used to when she was scolding her.

"This isn't fair!" Rose yells.

"You are dismissed!" the woman snaps.

For a second, Rose quails. For a second, she considers running from the room.

But she's got to stay. She's got to, because she's got to get a job and save up enough money to get Jackie a proper house to stay in, not some shitty flat, and she can't just be _Undetermined. Dismissed._

"I'm not leaving!" Rose says, and a flicker of _something_ crosses the woman's face and leaves it just as quickly. "I'm not leaving until you do your jobs and tell me where I'm supposed to go!"

The woman presses her finger to her ear. "Security, please remove this girl," she says.

"No - wait! Just stop it!" cries Rose, advancing towards the panel. "Please, just stop reading these lines, this - this script. This is my _life_. You can't just sit there! You're not robots!"

The doors open and two bobbies move forward, dressed in their standard perfectly ironed white uniforms, faces severe. They've got their hands on their guns like they might have to shoot her for asking for a job.

They grab her arms firmly, ready to drag her out, and she yanks away from them. "I can walk!" she says for the second time that day. Her head is pounding. Her smile is gone but her back is still straight and her chin is still up as she leaves the room.

She dials Mickey on her mobile as soon as she gets out.

"Rosie!" he shouts as he picks up. She rolls her eyes. Great, he's already smashed. "What did you get, then? I'm a bike messenger!"

"That's great, Mickey. Congratulations," she says halfheartedly.

"Yeah, well, it's not the best in terms of pay, but it's not bad, is it? Where are you? I'm at McGregor's pub with Jeff and Barb!"

"Sorry, Mickey, but I think I'm going home," says Rose. "I bet my mum's worried."

"Aw come on, Rose! Stop worrying about her for a minute and come have a pint! Jeff and Barb want to see you," he adds, as if this should somehow motivate her.

"It's true!" Barb's voice sounds even shriller than usual over the line. "I haven't seen you in so long, Rosie!" she coos.

"Rose, it's just Rose," Rose replies, trying not to sound as irritated as she feels. "I've told you a million times, Barb." The attempt is unsuccessful.

"Don't be such a spoilsport! Come on!" Mickey coaxes.

"No, really, Mickey. I'm going home. I'm tired," says Rose.

"Fine then, have it your way."

"Bye bye!" Barb giggles as Mickey hangs up.

Rose stares at her phone in disgust before shoving it back into her pocket (and she is _so_ glad this dress has pockets. Dresses with pockets are hard to come by). "Congratulations, Mickey Smith," she mutters. "You're officially the world's worst boyfriend." Never mind that he's taken the care and her flat is a forty minute walk.

There's a breeze that cuts right through her bones and blows its cold breath in and out of her, and there are gray clouds in the sky that threaten rain.

Rose tries not to cry as she walks, arms wrapped around herself to keep warm. Right now, Mickey and Jeff and Barb and who knows how many others are out drinking and celebrating (or trying to forget about) their new jobs. Tomorrow, they'll report to their stations and she'll sit inside her flat as her mother goes out and works to support her just like she has for nineteen years. Her mother, who had her when she was only nineteen herself and has been working as hard as possible ever since. And she's never going to get a new house, either. She and Rose will be stuck in that flat until they both die.

A wave of fury hits Rose like a ton of bricks. They can't do this to her. It's their bloody job to assign people to places and they can't just change that so abruptly with no warning whatsoever and leave her stranded. How's she supposed to get money? Is she just supposed to starve to death? It's absolutely ridiculous and completely unheard of.

She can't go to the police because they are the police. They're the government and the teachers and they're on the computers and CCTVs and televisions.

They’re called the Division. They've got an official name - at least, everybody assumes they do - but they're simply the Division. After nuclear war swept through the continents of the world and devastated America, Australia, Germany, half of France, Switzerland, Poland, and took a large chunk of Russia, after the split of Great Britain and the fall of England's last Prime Minister, after the royal family vanished one day without a clue of where they had gone, the world was in chaos. Rose wasn't born yet, but Jackie saw the end of it when she was a child, and she remembers it clearly. She doesn't talk about it - about losing her father to the fires that raged through the cities, about crouching in alleys and gutters with her mother as mobs swept through their town and ransacked whatever they could. Rose can still see the scars of it, when she looks at some of the older people - the remnants that they can’t quite throw away yet. Even the children seem to remember it, though they weren't there.

The Division was a heaven send. At first, it was a group of five people. Every child knows their names, learns them before they even reach primary school: Erika Winters, Cooper Grandsten, Paul Chambers, Stephanie Branssett and Laurel Smith. The Big Five who rebuilt the country.

It's called the New Republic of Europe, though everyone just calls it Europe to save time. In actuality, it takes up much of what used to be the UK, Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, the southern part of Norway, the Czech Republic, Austria, and a little bit of Slovakia and Poland. What lies beyond that, no one knows. The borders are walled off and protected under military guard. It’s always assumed that it’s where the savages are - the ones who weren't wiped away by the Last Great War, that is.

The Division has grown, of course, since they were first established. Now, it's got a few different branches. The first is the education branch, in charge solely of schools and regulations in regards to child learning. The education branch also facilitates the Sorting. The second branch is the public branch. They're in charge of the roads, the hospitals, the construction, health inspections - those sorts of things. The third branch is the defense branch, in charge of the military and Torchwood and everything to do with it. The fourth branch is the laws and courts. That branch of the Division is responsible for deciding the laws that govern the people and dictating the courts that make it up. Fifty men and fifty women are responsible for agreeing and writing the laws, and six hundred Division courts are spread out across England to uphold the laws. The laws and courts are also responsible for training police officers. The final branch is the Supreme Branch. This branch is made up of five people, selected by the courts. They oversee the going ons of the entire Division and of the entire country.

How Supremes are chosen, nobody knows. Rose has never heard of one being picked out of the Sorting, but how else could they be chosen?

She knows how the others are chosen, obviously. The lesser roles in the Division, from Head Administrator of Schools (HAS) to the P.E. teachers. These men and women are decided on when they turn nineteen, but unlike the rest of the new Careers, who take up their job easily and go on with their lives, they're sent away for eleven years. They come out when they're thirty. There are twenty-five training facilities set up around England. Rose saw one of them when she and Jackie went on one of the only two vacations they could afford. They traveled west to a beach and on the drive, they passed by wired fences and big, scarily clean white buildings. The buildings had no windows and Rose didn't see any doors, though of course she knew there had to be some. It scared her just looking at it. The way it just stared down at her. Made her feel funny, lightheaded ... almost claustrophobic. She couldn't imagine having to spend eleven years of her life in that building.

 _Well, at least I won't have to worry about that_ , she thinks.

But it was so frustrating she might scream. The Sorters leave at nine o'clock sharp and then there's nothing she can do. She's stuck for the rest of her life.

And the tears make a reappearance.

By the time she makes it to her flat, they're a steady stream. She stumbles through the door, fingers fumbling to put the key in the lock and twist it, and as soon as she's inside she slams the door and presses her back against it and just cries.

"Rose! How did it go?" Jackie calls, walking into the hallway to greet her. When she sees her daughter, she sets her cup of tea down and rushes over. "What's wrong? Rose?"

"Mum," Rose sobs, and throws her arms around Jackie's shoulders. "Mum, I don't know what to do."

"Shhh, Rose." Jackie rocks her back in forth like she did when Rose was a baby. "Shhh, sweetheart. It's all right. Whatever it is, we'll fix it, okay?"

Sobs wrack through Rose as she hugs her mother tightly.

They stay that way for a few minutes until Jackie releases her. "Why don't you go and get some rest," she suggests. "I'll make you some tea and you go get warm in your bed and take a nap, okay? We can talk when you get up."

Rose nods and smiles shakily. "All right."

She buries herself under pillows and blankets. Jackie comes in with some tea and sets it on the bedside table. She sits down on the bed next to Rose and plays with her hair, curls now messed up. She sings to her softly.

Her touch carries Rose into sleep.

* * * * *

Rose wakes up a few hours later and glances at the clock. It's only seven.

Jackie's in the other room, watching TV. She can hear the blare of the noise, but she doesn't want to get up yet. She buries her face into her bed and closes her eyes as memories of the Sorting rush back to her.

After a half hour of laying in bed and thinking about absolutely nothing, Rose gets to her feet. She runs her fingers through her hair a few times, picks up a cup of cold tea, and walks into the living room.

Jackie switches off the TV as soon as she sees her. "Are you okay?" she asks.

"I'm fine, Mum," Rose says softly.

"Rose, what _happened_?" Jackie looks shaken. After all, the last time she saw Rose cry like that was when their cat, Patches, died.

Rose doesn't reply. She walks over to the sink and pours the cold tea down the drain. Her mother always taught her not to waste food, as it was expensive to replace. Still, neither she nor Jackie wants to drink cold tea.

"Rose?" Jackie asks again.

"Undetermined," says Rose. "I'm undetermined. That's what they said to me." She mimics the woman's voice. "'Undetermined. Dismissed.'"

"They didn't." Jackie's eyes widen with horror.

"They did," says Rose. "That's what they said to me."

"They can't do that!" says Jackie, indignant. "They've got to sort you somewhere! Did you tell them that?"

"Of course I did!" says Rose. "And they had security drag me out like I was mad!" She covers her face with her hands, reality hitting her all over again. "Oh, God," she moans.

"It's all right, it's all right," Jackie repeats. "I told you we'd take care of it, didn't I? And we will. I'll phone Kendra - she's got this lawyer friend, you met him once, remember? He'll help us."

"Mum, lawyers for the Division. Bloody _everyone_ works for the Division. As long as they say I'm undetermined, I'm undetermined, and there's nothing 'Kendra's lawyer friend' can do about it."

"Don't get snappy with me now!" Jackie protests. "It's not my fault this happened."

"I know. I'm sorry," says Rose. "It's just - this isn't supposed to happen. I'm supposed to have a job, you know? I wanted -" Rose hesitates, then plunges forward. "I wanted to take care of you because your whole life has been about taking care of me."

"Now listen here," says Jackie sternly, "you don't owe me anything. I'm your mother, aren't I? What am I gonna do, throw you out on the streets?" She takes Rose's face in her hands. "I love you, Rose. That's why I took care of you, not because I was obligated to. And when you get a job, you're not gonna bother with taking care of me. You're gonna move into your own place and have your own life, you hear?"

Rose nods. "Okay."

"Good." Jackie lets go of her and moves towards the land line. "Now I'll phone Kendra and you sit on the couch and watch some telly." She leads Rose over to the couch and shoves her down on to it and then goes to phone Kendra.

Rose ends up watching a dramatic show in which an abnormally attractive woman tearfully proposes her love to a broad-chested, chiseled-jawed man. She slumps on the couch. After a day of keeping her spine completely straight, she deserves some quality bad posture.

Jackie spends the next hour on the phone with Kendra, and somehow Rose doesn't think that Latisha's new haircut has anything to do with her predicament. She envies her mother a bit, the way she can drift off a subject and forget about it, if only for a little bit to gush about how horrid Latisha looks.

"Any luck?" she asks as soon as her mother hangs up, if only to remind her that yes, Rose is still unemployed.

"Nothing," Jackie says. "Kendra's lawyer friend is sorry, though."

"Well," says Rose, with some malice in her voice, "you can tell 'Kendra's lawyer friend' to -"

A knock on the door interrupts her.

"Expecting anyone?" Jackie asks.

"No." Rose gets to her feet and goes to answer it. "It's probably Mickey," she calls over her shoulder as she opens the door.

It's not Mickey.

The woman from the Sorting is standing in front of her. Her face isn't made of stone anymore - it's almost human. She's let her hair out of its severe bun and it's falling down her back. She looks nice.

"What are you doing here?" Rose asks, shocked.

"Rose, who is it?" Jackie calls.

"Rose Tyler," says the woman. "Can I come in, please?"

Rose doesn't move. "What do you want?" she repeats.

"I need to speak with you immediately. It's regarding your assignment."

"My assignment?" Rose frowns. "What? Am I not 'undetermined dismissed' anymore?"

"It will take time to explain," the woman says. "Can I come in?" she repeats more forcibly.

"I don't even know who you are," Rose says.

The woman sighs. "My name is Martha Jones," she says, "and I'm here to talk to you about a man called the Doctor."


	2. Chapter 2

Jackie makes more tea as Martha takes her seat on the couch, smoothing her black skirt awkwardly.

"The Doctor?" Rose asks as she takes a seat in the armchair across from Martha. "I've never heard of him."

"We don't tell most people about the Doctor," says Martha. "Thank you," she says to Jackie as Jackie hands her some tea.

"Pleasure." Jackie leans against the wall and folds her arms.

"Doctor," says Rose. "Wasn't that the old word for a Healer?"

Martha nods. "They're a bit different, but they both attempt to patch people up, so I suppose for our purposes, they're the same thing."

"So who's 'the Doctor', then?" Rose asks. "Does he work the Division?"

"The Doctor . . . doesn't work for anyone," says Martha. "But yes, I suppose he's currently employed by the Division."

"What, he's employed for them but he doesn't work for them? That doesn't make any sense."

"It's complicated." Martha takes a sip of her tea and struggles to refrain from making a face. Rose smiles to herself. Most people don't like her mother's tea, but since she's grown up with it, she's become used to it.

"Then tell me," Rose says.

"The Doctor is brilliant," says Martha. There's a sort of light in her eyes which wasn't there earlier. "Honestly. He's a genius. In the Last Great War, he was one of Britain's greatest assets."

"So he was a soldier? I thought he was a doctor," says Rose.

"He's _the_ Doctor," says Martha, as if this explains everything.

"Right, _the_ Doctor," repeats Rose, in a tone of voice which she hopes conveys how annoying it is to be in a conversation that she doesn't understand.

"He's a tactician," says Martha. "He's an incredibly intelligent and highly skilled strategist, but he never bears a weapon if he can help it. He also was an inventor. He came up with some of the weapons that kept Britain and Europe as a whole alive."

"So he just planned out battles, he never participated?"

Martha shakes her hand. "No, he never fought, but he didn't need to. With his ideas and weapons, Europe stood strong."

Jackie snorts. "If he's so great, how come we didn't win?" she says icily.

"He was wounded gravely in the Battle of Lithuania," says Martha.

"I thought you said he didn't fight," says Rose. It's a bit frustrating how Martha keeps talking in circles.

"After a few years of the war, the Doctor had a change of heart," says Martha. "He didn't want to participate in the fighting anymore. But retirement wasn't an option for him, not at that stage. Europe had too much to lose, and he was the only reason they weren't losing it. General Hartman ordered that he not leave his position, and, to ensure that he wouldn't, she imprisoned him."

"So how'd he end up in the middle of the Battle of Lithuania?"

"That's unclear," says Martha. With a small smile, she goes on: "I told you he was brilliant, didn't I? He managed to break out of the highest security prison at the time, and we still don't know how he did it. The next time Hartman saw him, she was picking his body up off the ground."

"So what's this Doctor got to do with me?"

"The Doctor didn't die in Lithuania."

"Oh my God." Rose buries her face in her hands. "Please just explain this to me straight."

"I told you it was complicated, didn't I?" Martha sounds almost teasing. Rose gives her an incredulous look. "The Doctor was dying," says Martha. "Hartman didn't have the technology to save him, so she did the next best thing. She froze him."

"She _froze_ him?"

"Preserved him perfectly within Torchwood," says Martha. She sips the tea again, probably trying to get Jackie to stop looking at her like she'd just killed a newborn kitten. "I suppose you know what Torchwood is?"

"Yeah. They develop and build weapons for the Division," says Rose. "Part of the military branch, right?"

"It is very much the Doctor's organization. It was created during the war for the purposes of assisting him in creating weapons," says Martha. "But, at this point, they do much more than build weapons. They build everything, from your cell phone to your microwave."

"So they froze the Doctor," Rose prompts. "And then what?"

"That was 2035," says Martha. "Forty-three years later, Torchwood was finally able to restore him." She bites her lip. "He's not . . . he's different now," she says. "There were complications, and they had to make a few substitutes."

"Substitutes?"

"Not important," Martha says quickly. "The important part is, he woke up. He's awake and he's employed by the Division to begin creating weapons again."

"Yeah, you said that," says Rose. "You said, he's employed by the Division but he doesn't work for them. What does that mean?"

"It means," says Martha, "that he's supposed to be making weapons, but he's not."

"What's he doing, then?"

"Building cabinets."

Rose laughs. Martha doesn't.

"You're not serious," says Jackie.

"I am," says Martha.

"You must be joking," says Rose.

"I'm not," says Martha.

"Cabinets," says Rose.

"I've heard he's branched out to tables as well."

Rose snorts. Martha frowns.

"So he doesn't want to make weapons," says Rose. "What's that got to do with me?"

"In the past, the Doctor has had assistants."

"Assistants?"

"Yes. When he worked for Britain before, he had assistants who helped him. The last one was a girl named Ace."

"What happened to her?" Rose has a feeling that she knows what happened to Ace.

"She was at the Battle of Lithuania. Unfortunately, Torchwood could only preserve one."

"So you let her die," says Rose.

" _I_ didn't let her die. I wasn't there," Martha snaps. "General Hartman made that decision. If you want to take it up with her, I can give the address of the cemetery."

Rose closes her mouth and crosses her arms.

For a minute, nobody speaks. Finally, Rose says, "So what's this got to do with me?" for what feels like the hundredth time.

Martha fidgets. "I imagine you don't know much about what and who lies outside of the New Republic of Europe," she says.

"I didn't know there was anything out there," says Rose. "I thought it was all destroyed by the nukes. I didn't know there were people alive out there."

"Then keep it to yourself," Martha says sharply. "The last thing the Division needs is people finding out." She looks pointedly at Jackie, already having deemed her the most threatening. "But there are survivors of the Last Great War outside our borders," says Martha. "What you said is true - the land out there has been devastated. There's barely anything to live off of, and nothing sustainable for a long time. For that reason, they want to get in."

"Then why don't you let them in?"

"We can't," says Martha. She seems to choose her next words carefully. "There are many people out there, and most of them would not be able to fit into this society. They have lived in a relative anarchy for the last fifty years. They simply -" She pauses, and then says, "It is the opinion of the Division that they would never be able to live to our rules. And, also, if the Division began to let people in, they might have to start letting people out, and the environment out there is nowhere near safe enough."

"If the environment's not safe, that's all the more reason to let them in!" says Rose. "You're just going to let them die out there?"

"It's not my decision," says Martha.

"So the Division wants . . . what? The Doctor to start building weapons so they can kill all those people?"

"The Division wants the Doctor to start building weapons to _defend_ ourselves from those people," says Martha. "I told you there were a lot of them, didn't I? They're strong, and they're trying to break down the walls."

"And you want me to be his assistant," says Rose.

"Yes."

"Then why couldn't you have just _told_ me that?" Rose groans. "Why'd you have to keep everything such a bloody secret? I've been freaking out all evening!"

"We didn't know if you'd be allowed ourselves!" says Martha. "We were completely unprepared for you to give the answers you did. We were going to make you a shop girl!"

"A _shop girl_?" Rose repeats hotly. "You mean you'd already decided! Is that what you do? Make up your minds ahead of time?"

"Of course not," Martha says calmly. "But we do try to get a basic sense of where the person -"

"Stop. Stop talking," says Rose in disgust.

"Rose, we assign thousands of nineteen year olds to their careers in one day!" says Martha. "We don't have time -"

"It's the entirety of their lives," says Rose shortly. "You might put a little more thought into it."

Martha purses her lips. "Regardless, we were taken by surprise when you met the exact criteria for the Doctor's assistant."

"How'd I do that? He's a genius, and I couldn't tell you what constellation the M-whatever was in."

"M8 Lagoon Nebula," says Martha automatically, "and that's exactly it." She looks a bit more excited now. Excited and nervous. "The first assistant we tried was a boy named Adric. He was a genius, too. We thought the Doctor might like to work with someone equal to him intellectually. He definitely didn't. Adric could be a bit . . . abrasive, and we thought that the Doctor might respond to a more soothing personality. We brought in Zoe, another genius with an IQ even higher than the Doctor's. He got on well with her, but she never quite convinced him to stop building cabinets, so she was dismissed. The third one . . ." Martha pauses, takes a breath, and says, "The third one was me."

"You?" Rose asks.

"Yes."

"And it didn't work out?"

"No." Martha doesn't offer any more details. "The Doctor seems to have a specific criteria for his assistants."

"What's that?"

"A strong moral compass, a trusting disposition without being naïve, quick reflexes, an ability to remain cool in difficult situations, and a willingness to learn," says Martha. "That's what we were missing. We were trying to get people who could compete with him intellectually, but that's not what matters to him. We think he likes being able to teach."

"And you think that's me?" Rose asks. "You think I have a - a strong moral compass and quick reflexes and - whatever else? You think I'm capable of convincing him to come out a fifty year retirement?"

"Yes," says Martha.

"I was gonna be a shop girl!"

"You were," Martha agrees, "but not anymore."

For a moment, Rose can't say anything. She leans back in her seat, stunned. It's a bit of a rush to go from _Undetermined Dismissed_ to an assistant to a supposed military genius who she's somehow supposed to convince to start building weapons again and to stop building, of all things, cabinets.

Oh, but don't forget, he's branched out to tables, too.

"What's the pay like?" says Jackie after the silence stretches on for a considerable amount of time.

"Now that," says Martha with a grin, "we promise that will be very good. How does two hundred thousand pounds sound?"

Rose gapes. "A - a year?"

"A month," says Martha.

"That sounds . . ." Rose lets the sentence trail away.

_"Wonderful!"_ says Jackie. "When does she start?"

"As soon as possible," says Martha. "We were hoping to fly you out tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Jackie looks a little taken aback. 

"Fly me out? What do you mean, fly me out?" Rose asks.

"The Doctor's stationed at Torchwood," Martha explains. "That's in the Welsh District."

"The Welsh District? But won't she be coming home after work?" Jackie asks. "What's her hours, anyway?"

"Assisting the Doctor is a full time occupation," says Martha.

"You mean I'm not going to be able to see my daughter?!" Jackie exclaims.

"Rose and the Doctor can work out her hours off," says Martha. "I'm sure he'll give you weekends off," she adds generously. "That's what he did for me."

"Weekends off!" Rose exclaims. "What's so important about building cabinets, anyway?"

Martha's smile disappears. "You can't come in with that attitude," she warns Rose. "I'm telling you now. Being open minded is key."

"What time tomorrow?" Rose asks, growing weary of the conversation.

"Two o'clock," says Martha, getting to her feet. "I would suggest starting to pack now." She holds her hand out to shake.

Rose remains sitting on the couch, unable to move. Her head is spinning. "But I've got a life here," she says suddenly. "I've got mates. I've got a boyfriend. I've got a mum." She looks at Jackie, who looks just as stunned as she feels. "I can't - I can't just _leave_."

"It's difficult to adjust to at first. Believe me, I know," says Martha kindly, not withdrawing her hand. "But trust me, the things you'll learn when you're with the Doctor . . . it's worth it."

Rose gets to her feet and shakes Martha's hand.

"Two o'clock!" Martha calls over her shoulder as she lets herself out of the flat.

Rose turns to Jackie and sees what she imagines is her own expression reflected back at her. "Did that . . . did that really just happen?" she asks.

"I need a drink," announces Jackie.

"Pour one for me, too." Rose begins to walk towards her bedroom.

"Where are you going?" Jackie calls.

"Didn't you hear?" Rose calls back. "I've got to pack!"

* * * * *

When she wakes up, she's sure it must have been a dream.

When she opens her eyes and sees her bags packed neatly and lying on the floor of her bedroom, she can still hardly believe that it's real.

She wakes up at eight, but she doesn't get out of bed until eight thirty. When she walks into the kitchen, she sees her mother on the couch in the living room, like she's been there all night. Jackie gets to her feet and, without a word, hugs her daughter.

"I can't believe this," she says into Rose's shoulder. "I thought I'd have more time with you."

Rose hugs her back awkwardly. "It's fine, Mum. I'll be back every weekend," she promises. "And two hundred thousand quid ain't bad, is it?" she teases.

Jackie smiles and lets go. "I suppose not." She fusses with Rose's hair for a second, then says, "I'll make breakfast."

_Oh no._ "Great!" says Rose, trying her best to sound enthusiastic.

After choking down her breakfast (sausages and boiled tomatoes), Rose changes into a simple outfit: jeans, a white tank top, and a pink zip-up sweater. She slips her feet into some tennis shoes and ties her hair back into a ponytail, applies her usual makeup, and examines herself in the mirror.

"Well, it'll have to do," she decides, and walks out.

The rest of the day passes in a nervous blur. She eats lunch at one point, fish and chips, and she watches a bit of TV. She doesn't speak to Jackie much until it's one thirty and she starts dealing with the fact that she's only going to see her mother on weekends for a very long time.

At one forty five Jackie hugs her tightly for a second time and Rose wonders if she'll be able to cope on her own. Jackie is an extrovert in the purest sense of the word - she needs to be surrounded by people. She's had Rose in her flat for nineteen years, just the two of them, and now she's going to be alone.

"Promise me you'll go out with your friends and you won't just hang around here," Rose says. "I'll come and visit, but I don't want you to be lonely without me."

"No helping that, sweetheart," says Jackie. She sees the look on Rose's face and adds, "Couldn't hurt to try, I guess."

At one fifty five there's a strange noise outside, sort of a mix between chopping and whirring. "What the hell is that?" says Jackie. She opens the window and pokes outside, craning her neck to look around. "I don't see anything." She closes the window and looks at Rose, as if for an explanation. All she gets is a shrug in return.

At two o'clock sharp there's a rapping at the door. Rose grabs two of her suitcases and goes to answer it. Jackie grabs the remaining one and follows her.

Martha Jones stands outside with her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. She's wearing a crisp black uniform and she's flanked by two soldiers in similar outfits. They're not wearing any noticeable weapons, and their hands are clasped behind their backs, spines straight, standing at attention.

"What's this?" Jackie asks as the soldiers move forwards. They take Rose's suitcases from her and begin to walk towards the stairs.

"Right this way," says Martha, all business.

Rose turns to her mother. "Goodbye," she says. "I love you!"

"Miss Tyler," says Martha, some amount of annoyance in her voice.

Rose doesn't hug her mother goodbye. She takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders, and follows Martha and the two soldiers.

"I love you too," Jackie calls after her.

Rose makes a move to walk down the stairs, but Martha and the two soldiers walk up it instead, and Rose has to jog to catch up to her. "Aren't we taking a car?" she asks.

"No," says Martha shortly.

"Great, you're a talkative one," Rose mutters as they climb higher. The whirring sound grows louder, and realization hits her. "That noise," she says. "Don't tell me that sound is -"

They reach the roof and the word "helicopter" dies in Rose's mouth. She's greeted with the sight of a jet black, twenty meter long military helicopter parked on the roof of the building. The soldiers are already loading her bags into it. Once they're finished, they stand at attention again.

Martha ushers Rose in first. She climbs in after her, the soldiers right behind her. She straps Rose into her seat and hands her a helmet. "Put this on," she instructs as she begins to strap herself in.

Rose slides the helmet over her head, and all the sound around her is cut out.

"Drop the visor," Martha orders, only Rose doesn't hear it normally. Martha's voice sounds like it's right next to her ear, and she jerks, startled. "Oh, I forgot to mention," Martha adds, sounding amused. "There's a microphone and headset in the helmet."

Rose drops the visor on the helmet and is thrown into pitch darkness. "Why can't I see anything?" she asks.

"You can't see the route we take to Torchwood," Martha says.

"It's a secret?"

"Yes."

"Great." Rose plays with her nails, which would probably be more entertaining if she could see her nails.

She doesn't like being in a helicopter, she decides as it takes off. Maybe she would like it better if she could see or hear, but being blind and deaf in a tilting, spinning contraption as it hurtles through the sky on its way to a top secret location is not her idea of enjoyable.

She's not exactly sure how long the ride lasts. It's possible that she falls asleep in her quiet, dark world - she can't even tell the difference between being awake and being asleep. She might have drifted off, though, because she jumps and flinches when Martha's voice says, "We're landing now," in her ear.

"Right. Yeah," she says quickly, trying to disguise her brief moment of panic.

She can feel the helicopter lowering itself to the ground, and everything becomes still. Hands pry at her visor and Martha pulls it open to smile at her. "Okay, you can take this off now."

Rose unbuckles the helmet straps and lifts it off her head. The two soldiers have already climbed down with Rose's suitcases. Martha lowers herself to the ground and reaches up to help Rose. "Watch your step," she warns.

Rose climbs down and looks around. She seems to be in some sort of warehouse, though it's most certainly a Division warehouse. She can tell because of the white lights and walls and how much it hurts her eyes. Really, a splash of color could go a long way in here.

She's surrounded by various aircrafts, from black helicopters to what appears to be white fighter jets. The warehouse is so big that she can't see the walls to her left and right. It just seems to go on and on forever, aircraft after aircraft.

"Wow," she says.

"I know, right?" comes a male voice. It's loud and noticeably American. Rose's eyes widen as she takes in the owner of the voice: a tall man with brown hair, a nice smile, and a long blue coat. "It's a lot to take in," he acknowledges, stretching out an arm to shake hands with her. "Captain Jack Harkness."

"Rose Tyler." Rose shakes his hand briefly.

"Nice to meet you, Rose Tyler. Welcome to Torchwood," says Jack.

"Don't start," says Martha.

"Don't be a spoilsport," Jack shoots back. He wraps his arm around Rose's shoulders and begins to lead her out of the warehouse.

"How'd we get in?" Rose asks, looking up at the very firm-looking ceiling above her. "Is it retractable or something?"

Jack chuckles. "Or something," he says, but doesn't elaborate. "So, I hear your the Doctor's new assistant."

"Uh, yeah," says Rose.

Jack snorts. "Good luck with _that_."

"Jack!" Martha chides.

"Just saying," says Jack. "I hope you like cabinets."

"It doesn't do any good to discourage her before she's even started," says Martha crossly.

"What? Some people _love_ cabinets," says Jack. His smile turns a bit devilish as he says, "I dated this one guy who -"

"All right, that's enough of that!" Martha interjects quickly. "I'll take it from here." She pulls Rose away quickly.

"Hey, if you ever get bored with Doc, come visit me!" Jack calls after her. "Fourth floor! I'll tell you the rest of the story!" With that, Martha yanks Rose into the brightly lit hallway and closes the door behind her. Rose thinks she can hear Jack laughing.

"This way," says Martha, letting go of Rose. "And yes, he's always like that."

"I like him," decides Rose.

"Mind that you don't like him too much," Martha says. "God, sometimes I feel like the only person . . ." She lets the thought trail away. "Well, you know."

"He gets around, then?" Rose asks.

Martha laughs. "Oh, yeah. You've got no idea."

There's a lift at the end of the hall. Rose's eyes widen when she sees it. "Whoa," she says.

"Come on, get in," says Martha. "It won't kill you."

Rose climbs in nervously and looks at the transparent walls. The lift freaks her out a bit. She knows what a lift is, of course. She read about them in history at primary school. Still, there's a difference between knowing what a lift is and being in one. "Are you sure it's safe?" she asks Martha.

"Very sure," says Martha, pressing a button marked SUB.

"'Sub'?" Rose asks.

"Sub-basement," Martha clarifies.

Rose jumps as the lift lurches into life. She grabs the handrails in shock as it begins to carry them lower. After a few seconds, she realizes that it isn't all that scary. In fact, it's rather slow. She lets herself relax and turns to Martha, who looks a bit amused.

"That's where he lives?" Rose asks. "Under the ground?"

"Of course," Martha laughs. "Rose, the entirety of Torchwood is underground."

"Really?" Rose asks.

"Yeah!" says Martha. "What, you thought we could build a huge building above ground and keep it a secret?" She shakes her head, still laughing a bit. She stops when she sees the look on her face. "You're not claustrophobic, are you?" she asks, eyeing her.

"No," says Rose, though she doesn't like the idea of spending five days a week in a secret building underground with a strange military genius who has apparently gone a bit crazy.

Martha seems to sense this and grips her shoulder reassuringly. "You'll be fine," she says. "He's friendly, all right? Just be yourself and don't worry too much and you'll be okay."

Rose takes a deep breath. "Okay."

Martha squeezes her shoulder a bit and lets her go as the lift reaches the bottom. The doors open slowly, and Rose leans into Martha.

"Doctor?" Martha calls into the room. "It's Martha."

"Martha!" a man's voice yells in response, and for the first time, Rose comes face-to-face with the Doctor.


	3. Chapter 3

She doesn't know what she was expecting.

Maybe a grumpy old man. Maybe a stony-faced ex-soldier. Maybe a mad scientist. But certainly not a young, skinny man in a pinstriped brown suit and thick glasses, with hair that seems to defy gravity.

"Who are you?" he asks, squinting at Rose.

"This is Rose Tyler," says Martha, pushing Rose forward a bit. "She's going to be working with you." She pushes her again. "Go say hi," she whispers in Rose's ear.

"Blimey, it's like primary school all over again," Rose mutters. She offers her hand to the Doctor. "Uh, hi. I'm Rose Tyler."

The Doctor shakes her hand enthusiastically. "Hello, Rose Tyler!" he practically shouts. "You're going to help me with the old cabinet building, then?"

"Um, I guess," says Rose.

After an awkward pause that the Doctor doesn't even seem to notice, Martha claps her hands and says, "Well! I've got work to do, so I'd best be off. Nice to see you, Doctor, and have fun with the cabinets!" She gives Rose an encouraging smile and exits. With that, Rose's only ally is gone.

"So . . ." says Rose, turning back to the Doctor, only to find he's disappeared. "Doctor?" she calls, worried.

"Right here!" comes a voice from the ground.

Rose looks around the room. It's dimly lit and cluttered. The walls seem to made out of some sort of plaster which has been coated over in yellowish paint and then in dust. There are cabinets everywhere - lining every wall, occupying most of the space in the room. There's a lopsided table scattered here and there, but there are no chairs.

She can chart the Doctor's progress in cabinet building clearly. Some of the cabinets are sagging, leaning, or generally plain. But after them are better ones. Some of them have flowers carved into them, some of them have locks on the doors, some are made of mahogany and some are made of oak.

The tables leave a lot more to be desired.

The Doctor is on the floor under one of the said tables. It's only got three legs, and the underside of it is coated in nails. The Doctor's biting his lip in concentration as he attempts to pry one of the nails out with a hammer.

"What are you doing down there?" Rose asks.

"Building a cabinet," says the Doctor in a voice that implied 'obviously'. "Could you hand me the screwdriver on your left?" he asks.

Rose looks, but she doesn't see a screwdriver, just a strange metal device on the counter. "I don't see one." Upon further examination, the metal tool seems to be roughly the same size and shape as a screwdriver. "You mean this?" she asks, lifting it up.

"That's it!"

Rose tosses it to him and he misses the catch and has to fumble around on the floor for a second to retrieve it. "That's not a normal screwdriver," she says.

"No, it's not," the Doctor agrees as he lifts it to the nail he's trying to get out. He presses down, and a strange humming noise fills the room. There's a blue light at the end of it which lights up, and Rose can almost feel the air rippling around her. But still, nothing happens to the nail. The Doctor sighs, puts the screwdriver down, and goes back to trying to pry it out with a hammer. He manages to get it out, but unfortunately it splinters the wood, and sends a shower of shavings down on him. "Ah!"

"So what is it then?" Rose asks.

"It's a sonic screwdriver."

"A sonic screwdriver?" Rose laughs.

The Doctor peeks out to frown at her. "What's so funny about that?"

"What do you need a sonic screwdriver for?"

"What, you've never been bored?" he counters. "Never had a lot of cabinets to build?" he adds, motioning to the bountiful supply of cabinets which surrounded them.

"Are they sonic cabinets, too?" Rose teases.

"No! Don't be ridiculous, what good would a sonic cabinet be?" The Doctor pushes himself out from under the table and smiles proudly at it. It's still missing a leg, but he seems satisfied and turns to Rose. "So, Rose Tyler," he says. "Do you like building cabinets?"

Rose shrugs. "I've never built a cabinet before."

The Doctor looks horrified. "Why not?"

"I dunno. I've never had a reason to build a cabinet, or any furniture really." She laughs again. "In primary school I tried to build my mum a box shaped like a heart for Mother's Day, but I made such a mess of it that my teacher felt bad and gave me his."

"And you just gave up?" The Doctor sounds as if she's personally offended him.

"I told you, I never had a reason to try after that," says Rose. "Why do you build cabinets, anyway? Do you put anything in them?"

"No."

"Then why cabinets? You could build something else. Like chairs, maybe. Have you noticed there's nowhere to sit in here?"

"You could sit on the cabinets," he suggests.

"Right, because that makes sense."

"You, Rose Tyler, are looking at this far too linearly," says the Doctor. "People do that quite a bit, don't they? Everything's got to fit into your little diagrams. I build cabinets, so I must put things in them. This leads to that leads to this."

"Come off it," says Rose. "There must be a reason you build cabinets." She hoists herself up on to one of them and sits down on it.

"Well, why do you think I build them?"

"Me?"

"No, the other Rose Tyler," the Doctor intones. "Yes, you."

"How am I supposed to know? It's your mind. I can't think like you can."

"Oh, that's not true!" the Doctor protests. "You think differently than me, but that doesn't mean that your thinking isn't on par with mine."

"But you're a genius," Rose points out. "And up until yesterday, I was gonna be a shop girl."

"See, that's the problem with being a genius!" the Doctor exclaims. "Everyone says, 'oh, he's a genius,' and it's like an excuse, like they don't have to be. I'm a genius, yes, but I'm a certain type of genius that fits into a very narrow category. I can't think of everything. In fact, if everything was a universe, I couldn't think of one molecule of it."

"But you probably know better than me why you build cabinets," says Rose.

"That's not the point."

"Then what's the point?"

"I don't know! It's different for everyone!"

Rose examines him for a moment. "You're mad, aren't you? You're a proper madman."

"Insanity is a form of brilliance."

"Yeah, unless it's just insanity," says Rose. She sighs. "Right. Okay. I'll play. I think you build cabinets because . . ." She looks around the room and shakes her head, smiling. "I bet everyone thinks there's a big, philosophical reason you build cabinets, but I think one day you thought, 'I'll build a cabinet'. And then you built one, and it wasn't that good. And you thought, 'I can probably do better.' So you built another one, and it was a little better, but you figured it could be improved on. And now you've been building for so long, and you've gotten to the point where you can't be satisfied with any cabinets, even the really good ones. So you keep building until you get one that'll meet your approval, but you probably never will, because now you've set your expectations so high that no mortal man'll be able to reach them. And you probably know that, too, but you keep building because really, what else have you got to do?"

"Wrong!" says the Doctor.

"Wrong?" Rose repeats.

"A good guess. A _very_ good guess. Best guess I've heard so far. But wrong."

"Fine, then tell me why you build them."

"Nah!"

Rose cracks up. "Oh my gosh," she giggles. "You know what they told me, before I came here? They told me you're this incredible military genius whose intelligence level goes above every living person on the planet, and that you're extremely hard to get on with, and I've been handpicked to work with you. And I come in here, expecting some big, muscular guy in a uniform who doesn't want to talk to me, and you're bouncing around with - with a sonic screwdriver - building cabinets!"

The Doctor looks torn between joining in on her laughter and being offended.

"Don't worry." Rose hops off the table. "I like you better this way. With the wild hair and the weird cabinets and the . . . the suit." She begins giggling again.

"What's wrong with the suit?"

"Nothing, nothing! It's nice."

"'Nice'?"

"Did you build the suit, too?" she chuckles. "Oh! Is it a 'sonic' suit?"

"Don't be ridiculous!"

"I like it," Rose assures him.

"Thanks." He sniffs, and then says, "I've got a blue one, too."

"A blue suit?"

He nods.

"Does it have pinstripes too?"

"No!"

"Well, I'm not so sure it'll be up to par, then," she says.

He cracks a smile. "I'm sure your entire wardrobe won't compare to a pink sweater that says 'Punky Fish' on it," he replies.

"You'd be surprised!" Rose walks over to the cabinet. "Okay, so how do you build one of these?"

"Do you really want to?"

"What else have I got to do? Show me how to build a cabinet." She pauses, then says, "No, wait. Show me how to build a chair. I think there should be a chair in here."

"A chair." He rolls his eyes.

"What's wrong with a chair?"

"Why can't you just sit on cabinets?"

"Because cabinets aren't for sitting on, they're for putting things in."

"My cabinets are for sitting on and for putting things in."

"I'd rather have a chair." She examines him. "Do you know how to build a chair?"

"Of course I know how to build a chair!"

She points at him and laughs. "I bet you don't!"

"Well then you're wrong again, because I do."

"I bet that's why you haven't got any!"

"I know how to build a chair!"

"Fine." She crosses her arms. "Then show me."

"Fine. But only to prove that I can. Not because I think chairs are worthy of being built."

"Hey, maybe we could build a sonic chair."

He rolls his eyes. "That's not how it works."

"Don't tell me you don't know how to build a sonic chair!"

"Oh, no no no." He shakes his finger at her. "You'll get one chair out of me, Rose Tyler, and no more."

"Fine."

“Okay, the first thing you need is wood.”

"Sonic wood?"

He shoots her a look like she's the thickest person to ever walk the face of the earth. "No. It doesn't work that way."

"What, does it not work on wood?"

He looks away and doesn't answer.

"Oh my gosh!" she gasps. "It really doesn't work on wood?"

He continues to avoid her gaze.

"What kind of rubbish is that?"

He turns to her. "It does everything else!" he protests.

"What good is a sonic screwdriver for building cabinets if it doesn't do wood? Cabinets are made of wood."

"I'm fixing that setting!"

She puts her hands up. "All right, all right! Sorry!"

* * * * *

Rose's chair wobbles a lot. It's got all four legs, and they're even in length, but the angles that they stick out from the wood are not. The back seems a bit precarious too. All in all, sitting in it probably isn't a good idea.

It also took six hours to build. It might have taken a shorter amount of time if the Doctor hadn't found a small bag of jelly babies in one of his pockets and insisted on constructing a fortress out of them and eating every one individually, smacking his lips and saying "Mmmm!" after each one.

It also included break time, when she and the Doctor made some pasta and ate it while sitting cross-legged on the cabinets, and, a bit later, when the Doctor decided to see how jam would react with sonic technology ("You see, Rose," he said wisely as they wiped the jam off of the ceiling, "science is simply thinking, 'What would happen if we did this?' and writing down what happens.")

Rose sighs. "Well, it was a nice effort. I suppose we can try again later." She yawns. "I'm a bit tired," she says. "Is there anywhere for me to sleep?"

"Yeah." The Doctor points the sonic screwdriver at the wall opposite the door and presses down.

And what appeared to be a normally wall slides off to reveal a corridor.

Rose’s mouth falls open. "But - where did that come from?"

He looks at her and grins. "What, you thought I lived in this room?"

"Well . . . yeah!" She peers down the corridor. Unlike the white corridors of the Division and Torchwood, it's emitting a yellowish light and almost seems like somewhere she'd want to live. "It’s so nice to see a hallway that doesn't blind me," she says.

"I know!" he agrees. "Those Torchwood corridors are ridiculous!"

"They're like that in every Division building," says Rose. "You should have seen me at the Sorting. I thought I was gonna pass out." She peers down the hallway. "Blimey, it's long."

"This is just the A hall," comments the Doctor.

"How many halls are there?" Rose asks.

"I've lost count. Low hundreds," says the Doctor. Upon the look of astonishment on Rose's face, he adds, "After I got through the English alphabet, I started using the Greek, and then the Arabic, and the Swahili, and then I began saying AA and BB."

Rose snorts. "All right. Where's my room?"

"Walk down the hall, take a left, walk twenty paces, take another left, go to the end of the hall and it's the third door on your right," the Doctor instructs.

"Down, left, twenty, left, end, third door on my right," Rose summarizes. "Is that right?"

The Doctor nods.

"All right. And, Doctor?"

"Yes?"

"I meant to ask you, what's my hours here? Like, do I have breaks, or do I just stay here all the time?"

"I don't know. When do you want hours?"

Rose considers this. "Well, I'd like to go visit my mum on weekends."

"Okay, Mum on weekends."

"And what sort of food have you got here?"

"I don't know. Some jam, I think. And some bread. And maybe some noodles, though we might be out now."

"Right, so I'll have to go out at least once a week for shopping," says Rose. "I could probably do that on my weekend trips. Is there any money?"

"Yeah, lots," says the Doctor dismissively.

"Okay. That's it, I think." Rose begins to walk down the hallway. "Are you staying up?" she asks.

"Yeah, maybe a bit longer. Got to finish that table."

"All right. G'night," says Rose.

"Good night," the Doctor replies, and offers his hand for a handshake. They shake, and he confidently proclaims, "Rose Tyler, it will be a pleasure working with you," before turning to go back to him.

Rose stares after him for a second, shakes her head, and walks to her room.

It's a simple little place - a single bed, a beside table, a lamp, a cabinet (she wonders if he built it), a bookshelf, a TV and a walk-in closet. There's also a bathroom attached. It's small, but it's cozy, and she likes the splash of color - the bedspread is pink, and the walls are a nice pastel blue.

Rose's suitcases are already in there, stacked neatly at the foot of the bed. She tries not to let that creep her out too much.

She slips into some pajamas, combs her hair, washes the makeup off her face and brushes her teeth. She yawns and stretches out under the comforter.

It's been a long day, and she has no trouble falling asleep.

* * * * *

She wakes up to a sound roughly akin to a rocket taking off.

She stumbles out of her room, bleary-eyed with messy hair and morning breath. The very hallway seems to be shaking around her. "What is it? What's going on?" she yells.

"Sorry, sorry!" The Doctor comes sprinting around the corner. "Sorry sorry sorry sorry." He's pointing his screwdriver in every direction.

"What are you doing?" asks Rose.

"Um, nothing. Well, not really nothing. A little bit of something." He looks around him. "You haven't seen a Mars Rover flying around, by any chance?"

"No," she says shortly. "I was sleeping."

"Right, right . . ." He runs a hand through his hair nervously. "Were you sleeping well?"

"I _was_." She looks around for a clock. "What time is it?"

"Four, I think? Maybe four."

She finds one on her bedside table. "It's five in the morning," she announces. "I'm going back to sleep."

"That's fine. Shout if you see it," he adds. "I imagine it would be a bit hard to miss." And he's gone, leaving only the faint noise of red converse slapping the hallway floor.

Rose falls back into bed and shuts her eyes, but it's no use. Well, she'd gotten a good nine hours. She sighs, gets changed into her outfit for the day (a pink dress with a jean jacket and pink high heels. She's determined to show him the versatility of her wardrobe). She brushes the morning breath away and walks out of her room.

She almost gets lost in the twisting hallways, but luckily, she manages to find her way back. She doesn't see a Mars Rover on the way.

The Doctor's not in the living room (as she has now dubbed the room he makes cabinets in) nor in the kitchen (as she has now dubbed the room that contains bread, jam and empty pasta boxes). She makes herself some toast with jam and drinks some water along with it.

She's washing off her breakfast dishes when the Doctor makes his second appearance of the morning.

"Did you find the flying Mars Rover?" she asks.

"No. It'll turn up," he replies.

"I don’t suppose you have any tea?" she asks.

He stares at her for a minute.

"Guess not then," she mutters. "You said it would turn up? But last night you said there were, like, hundreds of hallways back there. So how do you know its, I don't know, juice will run out?"

"Its 'juice'?"

"You know, its battery or energy or whatever. Won't it stop working?" Rose can feel her face getting red. "Sorry, I really don't understand this kind of thing."

"No, no, it's a fair question," he replies, running a hand through his hair. The hair just springs back once it's released from his fingers. "I suppose it _might_ have," he continues, "if it hadn't become sentient."

Rose gapes at him. "It's become sentient?!" she exclaims.

"Yeah."

"But how?"

"Long story," says the Doctor. His eyes slip out of focus, like he's thinking of something very far away. " _Loooooooooooooong_ story."

"Right." Rose sets her dishes down firmly. "So, what's on the agenda today? More cabinets?"

"You sound disappointed."

"It's pretty boring, isn't it? Just building cabinets all the time."

"Maybe watching is, but not building."

"I'm not gonna build a cabinet," Rose announces.

"Suit yourself." The Doctor moves to the sink to wash off his dishes.

"Do you want me to do those?" Rose asks. "You know, since I'm your assistant?"

"Assistant?" The Doctor screws up his face like he's tasted something gross. "They called you my 'assistant'?"

"What am I, then?"

"I don't know. Companion. Mate. Lieutenant. Anything's better than 'assistant'." The Doctor still looks like he's swallowed something bitter.

"I thought I was here to help you."

The Doctor crosses his arms. "Help me with what?"

"I don't know. I guess . . ." Rose hesitates, and wonders if she should tell him. "I - never mind."

"What?" the Doctor presses.

"Forget it, it's not important."

" _What?_ " the Doctor implores.

"Just . . . that woman . . . Martha Jones, she said that the Division wanted you to start building weapons again," says Rose.

"I see." The Doctor's gaze is harder now, colder. "And are you going to try to convince me to do that, Rose Tyler?" The way he says her name isn't warm or friendly anymore. It's almost like he's mocking her, like he's asking her, _Do you really think that you're capable of that?_

"I don't know," Rose says, just as cold. "Maybe you ought to tell me why you don't want to make weapons anymore."

The Doctor laughs. It's not a good kind of laugh. "You've never seen a war before, have you." It's not a question.

"We've read about the Last Great War in school," Rose says defensively. "I know how awful it was."

"You've read about it. Right." The Doctor turns away.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rose demands. She follows him as he walks out of the room. "Oi!"

"It means," says the Doctor, spinning around to face her, "that maybe you should consider who's been writing your textbooks."

Rose freezes. The Doctor doesn't look cold anymore. He looks like he's burning hot, absolutely furious. Like he's made out of fire.

"Because if you knew," the Doctor says, "if you had any idea what that war was like, then you wouldn't ask me that question."

He turns away, leaving Rose, and goes to build more cabinets.


	4. Chapter 4

Rose leaves him alone for a little bit. She figures he needs to cool off.

She takes more time to explore the hallways. She takes a marker with her and marks walls with little symbols as she passes them, afraid of getting lost.

Most of the rooms are completely empty, but some of them have strange things in them. One of the rooms contains a huge tree with glowing lights hanging from it. When she touches the lights, they melt into her fingers so that she can push her hand through. She moves it in and out of the glowing orb and it feels hot and soft.

In one of them, she finds a hole in the floor. When she looks into the hole, she sees a long sort of chute, like a slide. She contemplates getting on it and seeing where it takes her, but all she can see is pitch blackness, and she values her life, well being and sanity too much to attempt it.

After walking through the hallways for quite a bit, she rejoins the Doctor.

"Are there tunnels in Torchwood?”"she asks.

"Not that I know of."

"I found a chute in one of the rooms. It goes downwards. I'd like to see where it goes," says Rose. "I thought, maybe we could put a camera down there, like a camera with a light attached to it, and see what it goes to."

"Hmm."

Rose sighs and marches over to where the Doctor is beginning construction on another cabinet. "I know you're angry with me," she says. "And, for the record, I'm sorry. I don't know if that matters or not."

"Of course it matters," he says quietly. It's not a statement of forgiveness.

"I don't know why you stopped making weapons," she says, "but it's none of my business. I'm not gonna try to force you to build them if you don't want to. That's not what I do."

He looks up at her, a bit hesitant, a bit wary.

"And I'm bloody thrilled I don't have to be your assistant," she adds, which draws a smile out of him. "No offense, mate, but I wasn't exactly looking forward to waiting on you. So why don't we just be friends and call that good?"

"All right." He gets to his feet and extends his hand to her. "Friends," he agrees.

She shakes. "Now you want to find out where that chute goes to?"

He considers it. "I suppose."

"All right, so we'll need a camera. We could probably get one of those at the store -"

"No need." The Doctor runs to one of the cabinets pressed into the corner of the room and begins to climb it.

"What are you doing?" Rose asks, startled.

"You wanted a camera!" The Doctor takes out the sonic screwdriver and begins to move it around the wall. A panel pops open. With a delighted smile, the Doctor pulls it open and reaches into a hole in the upper corner of the wall. After a few seconds of fumbling, he pulls out a small black camera.

"What's that?" Rose asks, startled.

The Doctor waves a hand dismissively. "Oh, they're always trying to spy on me. I'll bet there are at least ten more in here."

"And you can just take them out?"

"Well, technically I'm not supposed to, but if they really wanted to keep me away, they'd protect them better." He climbs down from the cabinet, holding the camera carefully. "Now we just need to hook this up to a computer, attach a light to it, put it in a protective casing with an inside that can spin 360 degrees and ensure that it stays upright, and sent it down the chute!"

That was far more complicated than Rose originally planned for, but she goes with it. "All right. So, where are we gonna get a computer?"

* * * * *

"Rose!" Jack greet her as soon as the elevator gets to the third floor. "Get bored with the Doc already?"

"Actually, I was hoping we could borrow a computer," says Rose. "Just a laptop is fine."

"A laptop? What for?" Jack asks curiously. "Is he building again?" He sounds almost hopeful.

"He's building something," says Rose as vaguely as possible. "But that's not the only reason I came," she says quickly.

"Oh really?" Jack asks with a grin.

"Yeah, I was hoping you could tell me the rest of the story?"

Twenty minutes later she's leaving with a laptop tucked under her arm and a new understanding of the many creative uses of cabinets.

The Doctor looks at her strangely when she comes back. "Are you all right? You look a bit . . . traumatized."

"I just spoke with Jack," she says.

"Oh, I see," he says, understanding collecting in his voice. "Well, at least you got the laptop. Give it here."

She hands it over to him, and he pulls out what appears to be a glass hamster ball with a camera inside.

"Do you like it?" He places it on the ground and kicks it across the room. As it rolls, the camera stays in its upright position. "Look, there’s even a remote control!" He pulls one out of his pocket and uses it to steer the glass ball around the room. He clicks a red button at the top, and a light turns on and off. "Handy, don’t you think?"

"I'm sorry, but all I see is a hamster ball," laughs Rose.

"Well, it _is_ a hamster ball."

"It _is_!"

"Not the point!" The Doctor seems a bit annoyed that she's not instantly amazed with his adventure. "It's handy, Rose!"

"Yes, yes, very handy," she agrees, earning her a glare. "So, set it up with the computer and we'll get moving."

He's still pouting as he opens the laptop and turns on the sonic screwdriver and rotates it around the camera-in-the-hamster-ball. Not taking his finger off the button, he points the screwdriver at the laptop. The screen buzzes to life and right away, Rose can see through the camera.

"Now that's handy," says Rose. "What's that?" She points to a second image in the bottom right corner of the screen. It's dark, and there's to be an indistinct shape moving around.

"That. Ah, yes. That would be Jack," says the Doctor.

"Jack?"

"Seems he was a bit suspicious over our uses for the laptop," says the Doctor. "He's watching us through the webcam."

"You’re kidding me," says Rose. "I had to flirt and listen to a fifteen minute long story on the inventive uses of cabinets for nothing?"

"Got the laptop, didn't you?" asks the Doctor, who seems a bit amused.

"I'm hurt," says Rose. "I thought I was a bit more charming than that."

"I'm sure you were," he mutters.

"What?"

"Nothing! So, shall we get this show on the road?" He zaps the wall open and looks down the hallway. "Do you remember where the room is?"

"Don't have to," says Rose proudly. "I marked it, see?" She points to the wall with the black arrows she drew.

"Wow," says the Doctor, sounding a bit impressed. "That's . . . slightly clever." He immediately backtracks. "You know, for a normal person."

"Sorry, was there a compliment in there?" Rose asks. "So let's go see what's down there, eh?"

As they follow her arrow trail, she confesses, "You know, at this point, I'd almost rather not know."

He looks at her curiously. "Why?"

"I dunno. It's fun, isn't it? Running around with the computer, building the hamster ball, all of that. What if it's just a pile of rubbish at the bottom?"

"Well, what if it's not? What if it's a secret cavern?"

"Might be. Or it might be something disappointing."

"Yeah, maybe."

"The point is, it's so much fun running around, I'm almost afraid to look. Like, what if it's all leading up to nothing, y'know?"

"At least you had fun before it ended up being nothing," he says. "That's the best part, I think."

She smiles at him. "Yeah, me too."

"Honestly, I'd rather know."

She laughs. "Me too!"

They reach the chute. Rose sets the laptop down on the ground and the Doctor positions the camera hamster ball by the top. "Ready?" he says.

"Wait!"

"What?"

"Want to record it?" Rose asks. She frowns - she's really not good with computers. "Can we?"

"Sure."

"Can we get Jack to stop snooping, too?"

The Doctor smirks. "I can easily disable his view, but then we've got about three minutes before he comes down here to see what we're doing."

"So let him. He can't open the secret door without a sonic screwdriver, can he?"

"Uh, yeah. There's a keypad combination. I just like using a screwdriver."

"Lazy."

"Efficient."

"All right," Rose sighs. "I suppose it's not a secret, just . . ." Her face grows hotter and she avoids his gaze and she says, "I'd rather it have been the two of us."

There's a pause. She looks up to see his response and is surprised to see that his face is a bit closed off. "Yeah, well," he says. "No helping it. Ready?"

"Ready," she says.

"Allons-y!" He lets go of the hamster ball, and it spins into the darkness. He runs to the computer. "What do you see?"

"Nothing, yet. Just rolling down." Rose watches the screen as she says, "Allons-y?"

"Yeah, it's French for 'let's go'."

"I didn't know that! Do you speak French?"

"No."

That ends the conversation.

They watch the camera, spinning and rolling. It seems to go on for quite a while, until finally, the ball reaches the bottom of the tunnel, and the light illuminates what appears to be a wall.

"Steer it around!" Rose whispers. She doesn't know why she's whispering.

The Doctor moves the hamster ball around. "It looks like a tunnel."

"Where's it go to?"

"I don't know. You want to go left or right?"

"Hmm. Left," Rose decides.

"Left it is." The Doctor steers the camera to the left and follows the wall, keeping it close to the camera so that it's always in view.

The tunnel stretches onward a ways. It's made completely of concrete, and looks old and beat-down. It also looks like it would smell horrible to be in.

"It looks old," says the Doctor.

"How's old Torchwood, anyway? Fifty years?" asks Rose.

"It was created 2029," says the Doctor. "So, about seventy-seven years ago."

"So, you think it was created at the beginning of Torchwood?"

"No, I don't," says the Doctor.

"Why not?"

"Because I was at the beginning of Torchwood. I created this place," says the Doctor. "Well, I say 'created'. It was a bit more unintentional than that. But I've watched this place being built. I've seen the layout."

"And you never thought to check the chute?" Rose asks. "How is it possible that there's a tunnel under the building that no one knows about?"

"I'm sure someone knows about it," says the Doctor. "The question is why it was kept a secret in the first place."

Rose thinks. "Maybe it's an escape."

"What do you mean?"

"Martha said the war was . . . was bad," says Rose hesitantly. She doesn't want to trigger him by talking about it too much. "Maybe the people building this place wanted a plan B in case it went wrong. Like an escape route, or somewhere to hide."

"Maybe," says the Doctor.

"Or maybe they were sneaking stuff into the building," says Rose, working into a rhythm. "If they were trying to get things in and out without people knowing, having an underground tunnel system would be perfect."

"That's possible."

Rose deflates a bit. "Feel free to throw stuff out at any time."

"I don't like taking guesses until I have enough information to form a reasonable hypothesis. So far, we know there's a tunnel, and we haven't got many clues as to what it's for," says the Doctor.

"So I shouldn't be guessing?"

"I didn't say that," says the Doctor. "Different ways of thinking, remember? Just because -- Ah-HA!"

Rose jumps. "What? What have you found?"

"Look at that!" The Doctor points at the monitor. There's a grainy picture of what appears to be the Torchwood logo stamped into the concrete wall.

"Torchwood logo. So?"

"So we know that it was indeed Torchwood that built this place," says the Doctor.

"We already knew that," Rose says irritably.

"Think, Rose!" says the Doctor, and he looks excited. "Torchwood wasn't an organization at first, was it? It was literally a basement that we built weapons in. It didn't have a logo."

"So when did it get a logo?"

The Doctor shrugs. "Don't know."

"How do you not know? It’s your organization!"

"I deny ownership," says the Doctor, "and I was frozen, wasn't I? Didn't have a logo when I went out, had a logo when I woke up."

"Right." Suddenly, it's all a bit awkward. Rose says hesitantly, "I - I'm sorry about that, by the way."

"Not your fault," says the Doctor. "Ah-HA!"

"Would you stop doing that!"

"Look! We've hit a crossroads!" The Doctor motions to the tunnel, which has just split into two separate ones. "What does that tell us?"

"That there's more than one route?"

"Yes! Which means . . . ?"

"That . . . there's . . . more than one . . . route," says Rose.

"Exactly!"

"Exactly," Rose repeats, scrambling to keep up, "what, exactly?"

"This is a system," says the Doctor. "If there's a branch here, there are probably branches other places too, right?"

" . . . Right."

"Which means that this is being used for people to navigate."

"People who don't want others to know they're traveling."

"And why wouldn't they want to know that?"

"I dunno, loads of reasons. But since it's Torchwood, I'm guessing it has something to do with manufacturing weapons."

"I'd wager money on it," says the Doctor confidently.

"Go right," Rose says, pointing at the right tunnel.

"Aye-aye, Captain," says the Doctor, moving the camera right.

His hypothesis was correct. They met many intersections along the way: four-way, T, Y, etc. Unfortunately, for all the navigating that they do, they can't seem to find any sort of end to the tunnels.

"They're very long," Rose says after a few hours.

"Yeah,: the Doctor agrees.

"I'm a bit hungry," says Rose.

"Yeah," the Doctor says, setting the remote down.

"Okay, if you've got any money, I could run to the store."

"We'd better ask Jack," says the Doctor, standing up.

"Okay. Pick this up tomorrow?" says Rose.

"Rose Tyler, you can count on it." The Doctor holds his hand out to her, and for the second time of the day, they shake on it.

* * * * *

Rose visits Jack again. "Tunnels were interesting," she comments, to show him that it's not as easy to spy on them as he might think. Or maybe it is. She doesn't really know.

"Definitely," he says, not seeming bothered by being caught in the act. Then again, he's probably been caught in much worse acts several times before, Rose thinks, which brings a slew of images to her mind that she really did not need. "Gonna give the laptop back soon?"

"Nah, me and the Doctor thought we'd explore a bit more. I actually came up to see if you'd take me shopping."

"What do you need?"

"I dunno, maybe something edible? It won't be very long."

"Make me a list and I'll go buy it."

"Or get me a car and I'll drive to the nearest place and get it."

"Sorry, no can do."

"Sorry, Jack, I think I'm a bit behind," says Rose slowly. "I thought I was free to go?"

"You are."

"Excellent," says Rose. "I'd like to go to the supermarket."

"No can do. Make me a list and I'll pick some stuff up for you."

"If I'm free to go anywhere," says Rose, her temper rising, "then why can't I go to the supermarket?"

"Well, look at it from my perspective," says Jack, leaning back in the swivel chair behind his desk. "If you want to go, I've got to get one of those helmet things on you, and put it on, and then get a car, and then sneak out to make sure no civilians see a super top secret building. And honestly, that's kind of a pain."

"So I'm trapped here," says Rose.

"'Trapped' is such a strong word," says Jack. "But, yeah, you're basically trapped here."

Rose is fuming. "Martha forgot to mention that bit when she was telling me about this job."

"So what? You wouldn't have been able to change it anyway."

"Jack, let me go," says Rose, leaning over the desk and giving him her best smile. "Please?"

"Uh, no. Sorry, dollface. I'm sure that trick works on all the guys back home, but when you've had a staredown with a two-headed mutant alien stripper, it tends to give you some perspective."

"You . . . what?"

Jack grins. "Make me a list. I'll have the food back to you in an hour."

"Fine!" Rose straightens up defiantly and storms out of the room.

"Fine!" Jack calls back.

She tries to ignore his smug look when she walks back into the room. "Can I have some pen and paper?" she asks.

"Sure thing, dollface."

* * * * *

Once she thinks she's got the necessities down, she sends Jack off, and goes to find the Doctor laying on his newly built cabinet (which is wobbling precariously), staring up at the ceiling.

"This just in," she says. "Apparently, I'm a prisoner."

"What makes you say that?"

"Jack won't let me leave to get groceries," says Rose.

"Hmm." The Doctor taps a rhythm with his fingers, eyes not leaving the ceiling.

"I shouldn't say stuff like that. 'Prisoner'," Rose muses. "It's not bad, being here with you. Actually, it's more fun than it should be."

"You don't have to worry about offending me."

"What, by saying I don't mind being here with you?"

"By not saying 'prisoner'," says the Doctor. "Or trying not to talk about the war. I appreciate the sentiment, I really do, but I'm not going to have a breakdown if you bring it up."

"I still shouldn't say stuff like that," Rose says.

"If you don't want to, that's fine, but don't stop for me."

"You seem remarkably adamant that I don't change," says Rose.

"What makes you say that?"

"Just the things you do, like telling me that my way of thinking isn't wrong, or what you did right now, saying I don't have to stop saying that."

"Your way of thinking isn't wrong."

"Doctor," says Rose. "I want to know why."

The Doctor looks at her and the corner of his lip twitches upwards. "I think the question you should be asking, Rose Tyler, is why I would want you to change to begin with."

"I dunno."

"You're the one who said it."

"It just seems like that's what you do at this point," says Rose. "I mean, when you're nineteen and you get Sorted. You get a new job, a new place, new mates, and you just become totally different."

The Doctor looks back at the ceiling. "Sorting," he mutters. "It's still so strange to me. You know, before, people chose their own careers."

"Yeah, I know. We learned about it in history class," says Rose.

"What did they tell you?"

"They said that people chose their own jobs and because of that some people didn't get any, and they were poor and they starved. And they also said the economy was doing really badly and countries were getting poor and if the war hadn't come, everyone would have perished eventually anyway."

"Good old unbiased school system," says the Doctor.

"Does it make you mad?"

"What?"

"The schools making the war sound like it was a good thing."

"There's good and bad to everything, Rose. There were probably good things that came out of that war," says the Doctor. "There were also over four billion dead after the war. It wiped out half the population of the world, and the people who stayed . . .”" He shakes his head. "Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better to die."

"What do you mean?" Rose asks, startled. "You're not thinking about -"

"No! No," says the Doctor. "One thing you'll find about me, Rose Tyler, is that I'm far too narcissistic to be a risk to myself." He bites his lip, looking up at the ceiling, thinking. "It was different before," he says finally. "There was so much . . . freedom. And it could be horrifying, don't get me wrong. The things that happen to people, the things that people do when there aren't as many limits on them. It could be terrible. But it could be amazing, too. You should have seen the art," he says, a faraway look in his eyes, "or the inventions, or heard the music. I'm going to get some of that music for you. I don't know how, but I will. Because it was fantastic.

"And then the war came, and people . . . they just stopped. They put down their instruments and their paintbrushes and their flasks and they picked up guns. There were some of them that ran wild, stealing and yelling about the end of the world, ransacking the dead's homes, sometimes doing the killing themselves. But most of them just cut their hair and put on their uniforms and followed their orders. They didn't even think."

"Did you do that?" says Rose, and it was a mistake, because the Doctor shuts down. She's only been with him a day, and she can tell immediately when he pulls his head back into his tortoise shell.

"Doesn't matter," he says briskly. "The point is, it was different. Nowadays, they tell you what to do, where to go, what to think. And I don't want you to ever be like that."

"Thank you," says Rose.

He looks startled. "What for?"

"That's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me."

"Oh, surely not."

"No, I didn't mean it like that!" says Rose. "I didn't mean, 'Poor me, nobody ever tells me nice things.' I meant that no one ever says stuff like, 'I want you to be free.'"

"Hmm." He's off in another place, she can tell. Buried somewhere in that strange head of his, thinking about things she could never imagine. She likes that - not knowing exactly what he's thinking.

"I'm gonna go see if Jack's back yet." Rose gets to her feet.

"Uh-huh," the Doctor says distantly.

"I think I'm gonna paint my body red and go for a swim in a vat of acid, too," says Rose.

"Uh-huh."

She smiles to herself as she walks to the door.

Before she opens it, she looks back at him. He looks small, lying on the table with his eyes trained on the ceiling. He almost looks like a child, and she can't imagine him being a military strategist or inventor of deadly weapons or anything besides a slightly madman who loves finding out about new things.

She doesn't want to imagine him any other way, either.

She turns and goes to find Jack.

He's returned with the groceries already, but hasn't bothered bringing them to her. She gives him her best glare as she picks them up. He responds with a cheeky smile and a wave. Thankfully, he seems to have gotten everything on her list.

Cooking again is comforting. She was never much of a cook, and never enjoyed it too much, but due to Jackie's lack of competence in the area, she used to make most of their meals.

It's comforting, but it also brings on a wave of homesickness as she thinks about Jackie having to make all of her own meals. She'd barely thought about her mother, running around with the camera and the Doctor. Now, she fishes her mobile out of her pocket and dials Jackie's number.

The connection doesn't go through. It's just static. She frowns, and tries again. Nothing.

After a few minutes, the tea and fried rice is ready, so she puts the rice into two separate bowls, the tea into two cups and brings them out to the Doctor. "Supper!" she says.

"You don't have to cook for me," he says immediately.

"Relax, I like cooking." She hands him his bowl and tea. He sits cross-legged on the table and she sits on a cabinet nearby. "My phone's not working."

"It's not?"

"I tried calling my mum. It didn't work."

"Let me see." He picks up the phone, dials a number, and puts it to his ear. "Oh, I see. They've blocked your connection."

"Torchwood has?"

"Probably afraid that your call can be tracked back to them."

Rose's hands curl into fists. "You mean I can't even call my mum?" she asks. "I can't leave and I can't make calls?"

"Here." The Doctor takes out the sonic screwdriver, fiddles with it, and presses it against the phone. His brow furrows as he opens the back of the phone and begins to play with the sonic. After a minute, he pops the back on, satisfied, and tosses it to her. "Don't use all your minutes in one place."

"You've fixed it?" Rose asks.

"You can all anywhere at any time," says the Doctor.

She plays with the phone in her hands. "Thank you."

"No problem." He goes back to his fried rice. "It's good!" he says in surprise.

"Yeah, my mum is a horrible cook, so I ended up doing most of it in self-preservation," says Rose. "I'm not great, but I can make simple things pretty well." She chews for a minute, then says, "I'm curious. How'd you survive without knowing how to cook?"

"I dunno. If I ran out of food, I’d ask Jack to get me some more. Usually nothing I had to cook," says the Doctor.

"So you can make a 360-rotatable camera from a hamster ball and fix my phone to call anywhere, but you can't make, say, some chocolate chip cookies?"

The Doctor shrugs.

"Well, that's what we're doing tonight," says Rose.

"What, making cookies?"

"Yup! I'm gonna show you my secret formula for the best cookies in the universe."

"They're not the best cookies in the universe."

"No, they're really the best."

"First of all, you couldn't possibly account for every cookie in the universe, and even if you could, it's a matter of opinion. You could never accurately label one recipe as the best because of the variety of the sentient perspective," says the Doctor.

Rose considers this. "No, I'm pretty sure mine are the best."

He sighs and rolls his eyes, but that doesn't stop him from beating the butter and sugars together with so much enthusiasm that most of it spilled on to the floor.


	5. Chapter 5

"So?" Rose prompts.

"You were right," says the Doctor. "These are the best cookies in the universe."

"Told you!" Rose says triumphantly.

"Hmm." He finishes what seems to Rose to have been his tenth, and picks up another one.

"How many is that?" she asks.

"Lost count." He picks up the next one. "Rose Tyler, congratulations, you have shown me the error in my ways. All the inventions I've made, and not one compares to these."

“Gonna quit building cabinets and start baking?” Rose teases.

"I didn't build one today," he says.

"Is that different?"

"At first, I built one a week, but then it became an everyday thing," he says. "I've been building a cabinet a day for . . . I don't know, months. It's weird." He smiles. "Maybe it's time I branch out. Baking, now that's something I could do! I'm gonna start baking now," he announces.

"I look forward to it." Rose puts one more cookie in her mouth and jumps to her feet. "I'd better call my mum. She's probably worrying about me. And after that, I'm gonna go to bed."

"All right," the Doctor says. "Good night."

"G'night!" Rose calls as she makes her way back to her bedroom. She has her phone in one hand, and she's dialing Jackie's number.

Jackie picks up on the second ring. "Rose?" she says.

"Hey Mum!" Rose says cheerfully. "Sorry I'm calling so late, but I've been a bit busy -"

"How are you? Where are you? What's he like?" Jackie asks immediately. "Is he handsome?"

"Slow down, Mum!" Rose laughs. "I'm fine. It's fine here. I can't tell you where. I don't even know myself. They're keeping it this big secret or something. And the Doctor's very nice. A little funny sometimes, but in a good way, you know? He's . . . eccentric." She didn't realize it would be so difficult to describe him until she's faced with the challenge.

"And? Is he handsome?" Jackie asks.

"Mum!" Rose chastises, checking over her shoulder before adding, "He's . . . he's not bad, and that's all I'm telling you!"

Jackie laughs. "Well, I'm glad you're having fun."

"I really am! Today, I found this weird tunnel, so we thought we'd send a camera down it, and he has this really funny device he calls a screwdriver, and it does practically everything, like he fixed this phone for me, cause it wasn't let me call you before, but anyway he used the screwdriver-that's-not-actually-a-screwdriver to build this hamster ball camera, and I had to flirt with this guy, Jack, to get a laptop -- I've got to tell you about Jack, he's really funny but kind of strange, and a bit of a jerk, too, but I'll tell you about that later -- so I got the laptop from him, and he --"

"Rose," says Jackie, "I have no idea what you’re saying."

"Oh," says Rose. "Sorry. I guess it's hard to explain over the phone."

"As long as you're happy, that's what matters," says Jackie. "I'll admit, I was worried when Little Miss Prim-and-Proper showed up."

"Yeah, Martha's a bit . . . brisk. But she's nice, Mum, you've just got to give her a chance."

"Hmm. You can do that. I don't like the way she talked to us."

"Yeah, she can -" Rose is cut off when a huge, gray robot spins around the corner, metallic wings flapping wildly, and barrels at her. She screams and spins on her heel.

"Rose? Rose!" Jackie yells, but Rose can't answer, as there's what she assumes is the missing Mars Rover right behind her.

"Doctor! Doctor!" Rose cries as she runs.

He comes sprinting around the corner so fast that he nearly falls over. "What? What is it?"

"Mars Rover incoming!" she yells as she sprints by him.

His face turns into a full-toothed grin. "Oh, _hello_! I was wondering where you'd got off to!"

"Shut it down!" Rose yells from behind him as the Mars Rover flaps towards them.

"Right, right!" The Doctor yanks the sonic screwdriver out of his jacket and points it at the Mars Rover, which falls like a brick and flaps its wings feebly.

"That was something!" the Doctor says brightly.

"You think?" Rose says, less brightly.

"I knew it would turn up eventually. I told you, didn't I?"

"Yeah," says Rose, "and I'd like to be able to walk down the hall without being attacked by a flying Mars Rover!"

"Rose? Answer me!" comes a tinny voice from her phone, and she retrieves it quickly.

"Yeah, Mum, I'm fine. Just had a bit of a scare," she says as she walks down the hallway. "So how are things there?"

"Good. Normal, you know," says Jackie. "Latisha brought her new Pomeranian to Sylvia's house and it made a mess all over the carpet, and you know how Sylvia gets about those things, so she started prattling on about how Latisha's got to pay to have it cleaned, but Latisha's a cheapskate and everyone knows that, so we knew she was gonna say no, see, and she did, and me and Kendra, we tried to escape, but then Sylvia began asking us to tell Latisha she should pay for it, and what were we gonna do then? So I told Sylvia, you leave us out of it, and then she got snappy with me! Well, I wasn't gonna take that, was I? So . . ."

Rose wonders if her mother had been just as confused and uninterested by her talk about the Doctor. She closes the door to her room and flops down on the bed and turns on the TV. She half expects not to get a connection, but it buzzes to life and brings up the normal channels.

". . . And now Sylvia's been giving me the cold shoulder, but I don't really mind it. She's a nasty little woman and I don't know why I've bothered with her for this long." Jackie finishes her story.

"Good for you, Mum," says Rose.

"Thanks," says Jackie. "Oh, before I forget, Mickey was here looking for you."

Rose's eyes widen. "Mickey! Oh my God, I forgot to tell him!"

"Yeah, he seemed a bit put off . . ."

"Can you tell him I'll be there this weekend, and I'll see him then?" Rose asks.

"Why don't you call him and tell him yourself?"

"It's late, Mum. I'm tired. I just wanted to call you to check in," says Rose. "Can you just tell him for me, please?"

"Well, all right," Jackie agrees.

"Thank you," says Rose. "Well, I'm going to bed now. I love you."

"I love you too," says Jackie.

"Good night," says Rose.

"G'night."

* * * * *

Nothing interrupts her this morning, and she sleeps in late, until almost ten o'clock.

She comes to breakfast in her pajama pants, instead of changing beforehand. She assumes the Doctor won't mind.

When she comes into the kitchen, the Doctor is already in his pinstriped suit. He's bustling about the kitchen, turning the pages of a big book and brandishing various kitchen utensils.

"Making breakfast?" asks Rose.

"Trying to," he replies.

She looks at the dishes spread out across the table, the whisks and the mixers and the beaters and the . . . Erlenmeyer flasks?

"What are you making?" she asks nervously.

"Eggs," says the Doctor, "and bacon. And sausages. And fried bread and baked beans and mushrooms and porridge and coffee."

"What, all at the same time?" she says, alarmed.

"Yeah."

"And how's that going?"

"A work in progress."

"Here, let me help."

"No!" he says quickly. He looks at her crossly and says, "You're not even supposed to be up yet."

"It's ten o'clock," she points out.

"Well, it took me time to find all the necessary things, didn't it? And to convince Jack to go out and get me a cookbook," says the Doctor.

"How come you don't want me to help?"

"It was, uh," says the Doctor, inexplicably flustered. He clears his throat and says, "It was supposed to be a surprise."

"A surprise? What for?"

"You seemed angry yesterday, after the Mars Rover incident."

"Oh." Rose is suddenly embarrassed. "No, I wasn't. It just . . . surprised me, that's all. You didn't have to do this." She runs to the frying pan to tend to the bacon. "Here, let me help you. It'll be more fun that way."

"Okay," the Doctor says. After a pause, he says, "How was your mother?"

"She was fine. A bit worried, a bit angry, but fine."

"Angry? Why?"

"Oh, her friend Sylvia's annoyed at her."

"What for?"

"Her other friend, Latisha, just got a new Pomeranian, and it went to the bathroom on Sylvia's carpet, and Sylvia wanted Latisha to buy her a new one," Rose recounts. "She wanted my mum to back her up, but my mum wanted to stay out of it, and now Sylvia's cross."

The Doctor stares at her like she's just spoken a different language.

"I don't know, either," says Rose. She yawns, and stretches. "All right, what's on the agenda for today? Besides exploring the tunnels more, I mean."

"I dunno. Thought I'd build more cabinets."

"Oh, that reminds me!" says Rose. “I've got a new idea for why you build cabinets. Can I run it by you?"

"Go for it," says the Doctor.

"All right. My idea is, it's a statement," says Rose. "You don't like Torchwood, it's obvious. You don't like building weapons and you don't like being kept in this building and you don't like the Division in general. So why would you help them? I was thinking, before, that it was you protesting. Just trying to get them angry, you know? And then I thought, why cabinets? Maybe because they're hard to turn into weapons? But that would be too obvious. So I thought some more, and I decided, it's a metaphor."

"A metaphor," the Doctor repeats.

"Yeah! What do you with cabinets? You put stuff in them. You store stuff away. That's what you're saying to them - you're done with all that war stuff, you're storing it away, and you're moving on."

"Wrong," says the Doctor.

"Was I close?"

"No. But it was a good guess, anyway. Not as good as the last one, but still good."

Rose sighs. "I'll figure this out eventually, you know."

"I'm sure you will," he says, amused. "I think the eggs are ready."

"Good, the bacon's almost done," says Rose.

They enjoy a lovely breakfast together, before Rose runs to her room to get changed, and they go back to the tunnel to monitor their camera a bit more.

* * * * *

The days seems to rush by. It's a blur of cooking with the Doctor, navigating the camera through the tunnels, helping him build cabinets, and not knowing what to think of Jack.

Martha comes by on Thursday to check in. She finds Rose and the Doctor in the middle of an argument about comic book heroes.

"It's impossible not to die from that sort of exposure to radioactive matter!" says the Doctor crossly.

"Well, he didn't! Maybe you don't know everything you think you do."

"Or maybe it's a comic book that's based more on entertaining children than scientific fact," the Doctor comments snidely.

"Oh my gosh, I remember reading this one story with Mickey where this random girl in a bikini swims to the bottom of the ocean," Rose laughs.

"That's impossible, the water pressure would kill her."

"I know! I kept laughing about it and Mickey didn't get why, and I explained it, and then he got cross with me for 'ruining the story"."

"Things are going well, then?" Martha asks, and Rose jumps about a foot. She hadn't seen Martha come up behind her.

"Martha!" says the Doctor, a delighted smile spreading over his face. "How are you?"

"Fine," says Martha, leaning on a cabinet nearby. "Just came to check up on you, see how things were going."

"They're good," says Rose.

"How are things with you, Martha Jones?" the Doctor asks. Rose wonders if he calls everyone by their full name, or if he saves that for people he likes.

"I'm really well," says Martha. "Remember Jeffrey, the old pilot?"

"Yeah."

"Well, he just retired. Eighty-two. Everyone kept telling him he had to take a break, and he's finally done it."

"Good for him!" says the Doctor. "Who's replacing him?"

"New kid. Just flew him in. I think his name's Rory? Rory or Tory or something. He seems nice. A bit easily flustered, but everyone's like that in the beginning. Not bad looking, either," says Martha.

"Can't wait to meet him," says the Doctor.

"Yeah, I think you'll like him. He's a good sort," says Martha. "Listen, I've got to move. Just wanted to check in."

"Okay. See you soon," says the Doctor.

"Bye," says Rose.

"Bye." With that, Martha's gone.

"Any weekend plans?" the Doctor asks like he hasn't been interrupted.

"I'll go back, see my mum. She'll want me to tell her everything I don't want to tell her," Rose sighs.

"Like what?"

"I mean, I'd like to tell her about the tunnel, but when I tried to do that before, all she did was ask me if you were good looking." Rose shrugs, then realizes what she's said. Her cheeks turn red.

"And you told her I was the most dashing man to ever grace the human race?" the Doctor asked.

"Something like that," Rose replies. "I suppose I'll have to explain the entire thing to Mickey, too."

"Who's Mickey?" the Doctor asks.

"Mickey? He's, um, he's my friend," says Rose.

"Boyfriend?" the Doctor asks.

"Uh, yeah, I guess." She really doesn't know why she feels so awkward about this. "It's complicated."

"All right," says the Doctor, and doesn't pry any further.

Still, she's uncomfortable.

* * * * *

Rose runs into Jackie's arms as soon as she sees her and hugs her tight.

"I missed you!" they say at the same time, and laugh.

"Missed you more," says Jackie.

"Doubt it," says Rose, though privately she thinks it's probably true. She's had spells of homesickness, but overall, she's probably had a lot more fun exploring the tunnels under Torchwood than Jackie has working in a shop and staying home by herself.

"Mickey said he might drop by," says Jackie.

"Hmm."

"A bit peeved that you didn't tell him about this."

"Did you say I was sorry about that?"

"Why don't you tell him yourself?"

"I will," says Rose. "I just . . ." She sighs. "Everything's different now, you know?"

"I suppose it'd be a change of pace, working at Torchwood," says Jackie. "How is it, anyway?"

"It's great!" says Rose excitedly. "It's really excellent. Just yesterday -"

"You said he was a looker, didn't you?" Jackie smiles at her encouragingly.

"A bit good, yeah, but that's not the point," says Rose impatiently. "The point is I've already learned a lot."

"Like what?" Jackie sits down at the dining table and motions for Rose to do the same.

"Like . . ." Rose's mind suddenly goes blank. "I dunno, lots of philosophical reasoning, I suppose. A little about the war," she adds as she takes a seat across from Jackie.

"The war?" says Jackie. "What did he say about that?"

"Nothing really. It was mostly about the time before the war." Rose leans forward and lowers her voice like someone might be listening. "It was really different back then."

"Must of been," says Jackie with a shudder. "Must've been just terrible."

"He makes it sound happy," says Rose.

"Couldn't have been very happy if it led up to such a big war."

"But that's the thing. He made it sound like the people were happier than they are now. Like the countries were squabbling and bickering, but the people were -"

"Countries are made up of people," says Jackie.

"I know, Mum, but -"

"I don't understand what he's doing, making it sound all idyllic," says Jackie crossly. "You remember what they taught you in school, didn't you? About how bad people were to each other? How some people were starving and others were wealthy beyond belief? It's better this way. Some people have more, sure, but everyone's got enough."

"He didn't say it was idyllic," Rose snaps. "He just said it was different, that's all." She's hit with a sudden realization that she really doesn't want to be talking about this with Jackie. "How were you while I was away?" she asks to deter the conversation.

It works. Jackie immediately launches into a (probably very exaggerated) account of the new drama in her social circle, and is only interrupted by a knock in the door.

"That'll be Mickey, I'm sure of it." Jackie rolls her eyes. "I tell you, Rose, you picked a clingy one."

"Don't I know it," Rose mutters as she goes to answer the door. Sure enough, it's Mickey.

"Rose!" he says. "Where've you been? I came over and Jackie told me you were away from work, and I didn't even know what you'd been assigned!"

"Let's take a walk," Rose suggests, grabbing her coat. "Mum, I'll be back soon," she calls over her shoulder as she closes the door behind her.

"I've got to talk to you," she says to Mickey.

"I hope there's an 'I'm sorry' in there," Mickey retorts, "cause you left me hanging, Rose. I had no idea you were leaving. You were just gone."

"I know," says Rose as she and Mickey walk down the stairs. "I'm sorry, Mickey, I really am. I meant to tell you, just everything happened so fast." She gives a brief, glossed-over account of going from Undetermined Dismissed to assistant to the Doctor. She leaves out everything about working for him, besides saying she's helping him build stuff, and that she'll be gone except for weekends.

"Blimey," says Mickey. "I always kind of assumed you’d get shop girl."

"Me too," Rose admits, shoving her hands in her pockets as she and Mickey cross the concrete courtyard. "It's a lot to take in."

"Yeah, tell me about it."

They walk in silence for a bit. Then Mickey blurts, "Are you gonna break up with me?"

Rose is a bit taken aback. "Why would you think that?"

"Well, you said you were gonna be gone except for weekends . . ."

"Why would that mean I wanted to break up? Do you want to break up?" Rose asks.

"No!"

"You do, don't you," says Rose flatly.

"I said no! It's just . . . it'll be different, with you gone. Like, for Jeff and Barb, Barb gets off work first, and then she picks up Jeff, and they can spend a lot of time together."

"Why do we have to be like Jeff and Barb?" Rose shoots back.

"It's not just them, it's most people!"

"Well why have we got to be like most people, then?"

"Because we are most people!" Mickey exclaims. "Well, maybe you're not, now that you're working with the Doctor . . ."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Mickey stops walking and turns to face her. "It means that Jeff and Barb are getting a flat together, and I won't get to see you except for a few hours on the weekend!"

"Maybe you should start dating Jeff and Barb then," Rose yells, "if their relationship is so perfect!"

"Don't yell at me!"

"Why not? You haven't got a problem with yelling at me!" shouts Rose. "I didn't ask for this, Mickey!"

"Yeah, but you're not too torn up about it either," says Mickey shortly.

"What do you mean?" Rose says. Mickey begins to turn away, and she grabs his arm. "No, tell me what you mean!"

"You think you're all special now, all above me, cause you're working at Torchwood with some bleeding genius -"

"I do not! When did I ever say that!"

"You didn't have to say it! I can tell!"

"You're just being insecure," says Rose.

"Oh, so now I'm insecure?"

"A bit, yeah! You always have been!" Rose cries.

"Then why are you even _with_ me!" Mickey bellows back.

"I honestly don't know anymore!" She sees the hurt flash across his face and immediately regrets saying it. "Wait, Mickey, I didn't mean that -"

"Yeah, you did."

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to say that!" Rose says.

"But you were thinking it, weren't you?"

"No, I swear, I wasn't -"

"Yes you were! You wouldn't have said it either way!"

"I wasn't thinking it, not before, I swear, I just wanted to say something -" To shut you up? "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, sure you are, Rose! You know, the feeling's mutual!"

She takes a deep breath and says, "Mickey, I'm asking you seriously, do you want to break up?"

"Yeah!" Mickey yells. "Yeah, I don't want to be with someone who thinks she's so above me . . ."

"Fine." Rose takes a step back and folds her arms around herself.

"Don't act like this is all my fault, Rose, it isn't . . ."

"I know it's not," says Rose. "I really am sorry." She begins to walk away, but after a few steps, she turns back and says, "Would you have wanted to break up if I hadn't gone away?"

"I don't know," says Mickey. Suddenly, he seems very tired, worn down and fraying at the edges. "Goodbye, Rose."

"Bye," says Rose, and walks back to Jackie’s flat.

* * * * *

Rose's life settles into a sort of routine.

During the week, she works with the Doctor. Sometimes they explore the tunnels. Sometimes they don't. After all, they have a building full of things to do. They have aircrafts and submarines and computers Rose doesn't understand.

One day, while going through the basement (the one above where they stay), the Doctor finds some old boxes full of strange devices which he holds up with a shout of excitement.

"A record player!" he yells. "Blimey, I didn't know they had any of these left!"

"What's it do?" Rose asks, staring at the strange machine.

"I'll show you. Any albums in here . . . ah, yes!" He pulls out another boxes filled with long, thin parcels. He flips through them, muttering, "No . . . no . . . out of all of them, why did _that_ one survive?" until he pulls out one with a black-and-white picture of four men.

"The Beatles," Rose reads. "Oh, I get it, _Beat_ -les . . . are they any good?"

"You will love them," the Doctor says as he slides the huge disk out of its container. "A lot of people thought they were the best band of all time." He places the disk on the record player and moves the needle until it's barely brushing against it. "Just listen."

The song starts up immediately. _"There are places I remember all my life though some have changed,"_ they sing.

The song is short, but sweet. Rose listens to it with her eyes closed, to be able to absorb the music as best as she can.

As soon as it's over, her eyes fly open. "Wow."

"I know," says the Doctor.

"Is there a lot more?"

The Doctor picks up the box and says, "Bring that record player down. We'll listen to them all."

Rose nods, picks up the record player, and carries it down, still singing the song under her breath.

* * * * *

She doesn't sleep so well that night. She's restless and the song's been stuck inside of her head for ages. It's about two in the morning and she's pacing the halls when she hears the distant sound of music.

She makes her way back to the living room and finds the record player going, playing a lively tune. _"Well it's one for the money, two for the show . . ."_

The Doctor's working on another cabinet. He's got his arm stuck inside it and is fiddling around.

"What's this one called?" Rose asks.

He looks up at her and smiles, but she notices that he takes his hand away from the cabinet and closes its doors firmly. "Elvis Presley," he says. "King of Rock, people called him."

"I like it," says Rose.

"Thought you might," says the Doctor.

They stand in silence for a second, across the room from each other.

"It's two in the morning," Rose says finally. "Do you ever sleep?"

"Yeah," he says.

Somehow, in a strange way, the dark seems to illuminate him. Maybe, Rose thinks, it's just the mad rush of the day that ruins it, but at night, she realizes how little she knows about the man standing in front of her. She doesn't know if or where he sleeps, she doesn't know where he's from or if he's got family, she doesn't even know his name. 

And he knows everything about her. She's told him about Jackie and Mickey and her father, Pete, dying before she was born. She's told him about her middle school friends; hell, she's even told him about Jeff and Barb. But she knows almost nothing about him.

It's dizzying, somehow. Staggering to realize how much of a stranger he is to her.

"Are you ever gonna tell me why you build those cabinets?" she asks finally.

He smiles at her, and it looks a bit sad. "Yes," he says. "I believe I will, someday."

"Good night, Doctor."

"Good night, Rose."


	6. Chapter 6

The tunnels lead to the sewer.

Rose and the Doctor discover this on Thursday, a solid week and a half into their journey through the tunnels when the camera rolls right into a canal of waste.

Rose shrieks a little as she watches the computer screen plunge into the putrid mixture. "The sewer?" she asks once she's recovered. "Why would Torchwood need a secret passage to the sewer?"

The Doctor doesn't share her disgust. In fact, he looks excited. "Think about it! What do people use sewers for?"

"Uh . . ."

"To get rid of stuff, exactly! So, if the tunnels lead to the sewers -"

"- then Torchwood's getting rid of stuff they don't want people to know about," Rose finishes. "Or, at least, they were."

“But what?”

They look at each other in excitement. Then Rose says, "I don't suppose the camera is waterproof?"

"It is, but it doesn't float," says the Doctor. "It'll be at the bottom of the sewer soon."

"That's too bad."

"Yeah," he agrees. "Still, we found some stuff out, didn't we?"

"And you can always build another hamster ball," says Rose. "What do you suppose they were dumping in there?"

"I don't know," says the Doctor, his eyes bright. "It could be lots of things."

"Whatever it is, it's got to be really noticeable and really bad," says Rose. "Bad and noticeable enough to warrant them building an entire tunnel system underneath the building."

"Yeah," says the Doctor, lost in thought. For a moment, he's quiet; then, he shakes his head and gets to his feet. "That laptop's useless now," he says.

"I suppose I have to bring it up to Jack, then," Rose sighs.

"Yup!"

"You want to come with me?" Rose asks.

"Nah!"

She rolls her eyes as she packs the computer up and walks to the elevator that she's now become fairly used to.

Jack's not at his desk for once, so Rose is putting the laptop down when it hits again.

Her head's spinning and she grabs the desk to keep from tipping over. All at once, she can hear everything, rushing and blurring around her . . .

"Get a grip," she says to herself, breathing deeply.

When she first told her mother, Jackie thought they were panic attacks. She brought Rose to a healer who said that Rose wasn't experiencing any anxiety and recommended advanced treatment. But that treatment would require 3 hour observation a day, and Jackie balked and brought Rose home. After that, Rose stopped telling her mother about it. She didn't want to worry her.

The whatever-it-is passes, and Rose straightens up again to notice that one of the file cabinets behind Jack's desk is peeking open. It's labeled BLAIDD DRWG and seems to be stuffed to the brim with files.

Rose is moving to close it when a man in a smart suit and tie steps in. He looks worried.

"Hello," says Rose, taking her hand away from the file cabinet.

"Hello," says the man, shifting nervously. "That's classified."

"What is?" She looks at the file cabinet. "What, the Blaidd . . . whatever?"

"You're not allowed to look at it," says the man.

"Relax, I didn't."

He stares at her like she's probably lying, and says, "Are you sure you didn't?" like she might forget something like that.

"I _didn't_ ," she emphasizes with a little more force.

"What are you doing here?" he asks, moving closer. Now Rose can see his name tag. It says IANTO JONES. She wonders if he's related to Martha, but then decided he's probably not, as his skin is too light.

"I was just returning the laptop," she says, motioning to the laptop she'd put on Jack's desk. "I borrowed it about a week back."

"You really didn't go in it?"

_"No."_

"Okay," says Ianto reluctantly.

"So I'll be going now," says Rose.

Ianto nods and steps out of her way to let her pass. Rose leaves the room, and as she does, she sees Ianto rush to the open file cabinet and push the drawer closed.

That was weird, she thinks. Very weird. And she wants to know why.

* * * * *

She tells the Doctor that night while they're eating supper.

"Do you know Ianto Jones?" she asks.

"Know of him. Works for Jack, doesn't he?"

"Yeah. I just met him, and he was acting really weird."

"How so?"

"Well," Rose explains, "I went into Jack's office to return the computer, and I saw a file cabinet open. When I went to close it, he came in and acted really odd about it. He seemed freaked out and kept asking me if I'd gone in it, even after I said I hadn't."

"Huh," says the Doctor. "What was the file marked?"

"I dunno, I think it might have been Welsh. It was like, Blad . . . something." Rose tries to remember it. "B-L-A-I-D-D D-R-W-G, I think."

" _Blaidd Drwg_ ," says the Doctor. "It means 'Bad Wolf' in Welsh."

"So do you know what it is?"

"No idea."

“You want to find out?”

"I don't think we ought to," says the Doctor firmly, "if it's top secret."

"Wow." Rose examines him. "Really? You don't want to investigate something?"

"No."

"Are you feeling okay?"

The Doctor looks up sharply. "Rose, as long as you're employed by Torchwood, you've got to follow their rules. As long as the Division runs things, you've got to follow their rules. They say it's top secret and you can't see it, then you have to accept that and move on." With that, he gets to his feet, puts his dishes in the sink, and walks away.

"Wow. Um, okay," says Rose, irritated. She follows his examples by dumping her food in the sink. What did she do now?

"Can you help me with something in the other room?" the Doctor calls, and Rose can hear the shifting off the wall which means he's opened up the passageway.

"Sure." Rose follows him to the other hallways.

He leads her down a winding maze. Left, right, left . . . she's lost track, and sincerely hopes that he knows where he's going. She asks him several times where they're going, but he doesn't reply, so finally they walk in silence.

After a long time of twisting and turning, he opens a room which appears to be the equivalent of an attic. There are boxes and boxes stacked on top of each other, and Rose coughs because of the sheer amount of dust which covered everything.

"Cameras, cameras," the Doctor mutters, waving his screwdriver around. After a minute, he says, "Clear," and turns to Rose.

"Rose," he says, "you _cannot_ say stuff like that."

Rose is taken aback. "Like what?"

"Did I mention the cameras?" the Doctor asks. "The cameras in all the walls? There are microphones too, Rose. You need to get past the idea that we're alone, because we're being watched at all times. When we're eating, when we're talking, when we're sleeping . . ."

"When we're sleeping?" Rose gasps. "You mean there are cameras in my room?"

"Probably, yeah."

"Oh my God." Rose's cheeks flush red.

"It doesn't matter -"

"Maybe to you it doesn't matter!"

"The _point_ is you could not have chosen a worse place to discuss your top secret plans of stealing Torchwood files!"

"So . . . back there, when we were eating, that was just an act?" Rose asks. "You are interested in finding out what . . . what 'Blad Whatever' is?"

"Blaidd Drwg," says the Doctor, "and yes, of course I'm interested. I'm interested in taking down the entire records of Torchwood and reading through each one, but I can’t."

"Why not? You're a genius. You hacked that camera so quickly," says Rose. "Why can't you just shut them all down?"

"That's different," says the Doctor.

"How?"

"The cameras are a live feed to different computers. All I did was switch the computer the feed was going to. Simple. But the cameras all run on a security grid. To shut them all down, I'd need to hack into it and turn it off."

"So why can't you?"

The Doctor runs a hand through his hair. "Rose, you remember when I said I didn't really mean for Torchwood to happen? That was true. But once it did happen, I didn't fight against it. In fact, I helped it. And by helping it -"

"- you created the security grid," says Rose.

"Exactly."

"Then why can't you shut it down? You know how it works!" Rose says excitedly.

"Because when I designed it, I was trying to make sure no one could get past it, not even me."

"Not a great plan, mate."

"Well, no," the Doctor admits, "but I was young, and I believed in our cause wholeheartedly. So I built a security grid that repairs itself."

"How do you mean?"

"It's a learning system," says Doctor. "It adapts automatically to any threat it receives. Basically, I taught it to program and reprogram itself. That way, even if someone managed to get in, it would be able to overpower them after a bit."

:And you made the machine smarter than yourself," Rose finishes.

"Basically, yeah."

"Well, brilliant," Rose says. "That's the second sentient machine to give you trouble. You'd think you would have learned your lesson."

"Hold on, the Mars Rover is completely different . . ."

"So we can't go look," Rose sums up. "Fine, it's not a big deal. I was just a bit curious."

"I didn't want to snap at you," says the Doctor. "Really, Rose, I like you being curious. I just . . ." He takes a breath and says, "If they find out, they'll remove you like they did to Zoe."

"Zoe?" Rose asks, startled. "Martha told me Zoe was removed because she couldn't convince you to stop making cabinets."

"Is that what she said?" the Doctor says darkly. "No, Rose. Zoe was removed and jailed for treason."

"Treason?" Rose asks.

"It was my fault," says the Doctor. "I should have made it clearer to her . . ." He shakes his head. "It doesn't matter. What matters is that you've got to play your role as the good soldier."

"I will," Rose says. "Promise."

"Good." With that, the Doctor takes her arm and steers her back into the corridor.

Rose wonders if he was trying to scare her. If so, then mission accomplish, because he can count her as properly terrified.

* * * * *

Jack comes by a few hours later, looking pissed.

"I didn't look in those files!" Rose says immediately. She's sitting on a cabinet watching the Doctor work on yet another addition to his extensive collection.

"I didn't say you did," Jack says flatly. "This is about this." He sets the laptop down on the table firmly.

"What about it?" Rose asks.

"I want you to tell me what the hell this is," Jack snaps, yanking up the screen to reveal a video image.

Rose can't help it, she almost screams. Blindly, she grabs for the Doctor, who seems to have materialized at her side.

"What is that," he says, voice low and rough.

"What does it look like?" says Jack, shoving the laptop towards him. "Because to me? It looks like a dead body."

The body's rotted to the point that there's only a bit of skin hanging on to some bones, but it's definitely a dead body. Around its ankles are chains, and the chains are attached to weights.

"It's . . . little," says Rose in horror.

"That's because it's a child," the Doctor says flatly. "I'd guess about a two-year-old female."

Rose closes her eyes. She could have gone her entire life without seeing that.

"Jack, what is that?" she asks, her eyes shut.

"I don't know," says Jack. "As fascinating as it was to watch you two roll that camera around in some tunnels, I got bored. I stopped watching. Where the hell did you go?"

"The tunnels went to the sewer," says Rose, opening her eyes.

"Rose," the Doctor warns.

"What? There were cameras, he's gonna find out anyway," says Rose. "They went to the sewers, and the camera fell in and sank. We assumed we wouldn't be able to get it, so we brought the laptop back."

The Doctor isn't speaking. Instead, he's squinting at the camera. "What is that in the background?"

His eyes widen slightly, and he takes the remote out of his pocket and begins to move the camera.

It still works, even underwater, and the Doctor rolls it past the first body and towards the indistinct shape in the background. As the shape comes into focus, it becomes more and more apparent what it is.

"Oh my God," says Rose. Her hands go to her mouth. "How many more are there?" she whispers.

The Doctor keeps moving the camera around, and it spins to reveal another, and another, and another. Some are smaller, some are a bit bigger, but they're all undeniably children. Two, three, four, five, six, seven . . .

"Stop it," Rose blurts, and the Doctor sets the remote down, his face stony.

"What the hell was Torchwood doing while I was frozen?" the Doctor yells.

"You think I know?" Jack retorts. "You think they tell me stuff like that?"

"You have those files!"

"I haven't read them!"

The Doctor laughs coldly. “And you expect me to believe that?”

"I don't care what you believe," snaps Jack. "If you know what's good for you, you'll chuck that remote and get rid of the camera and forget you saw anything, because in case you've forgotten, they know exactly what you're doing."

"What's that then, a threat?"

"I'm trying to warn you," says Jack. "Keep prying and they'll put a stop to it. And you know what that means." He looks pointedly at Rose.

"What? What does that mean?" Rose asks as the Doctor leans against a cabinet, arms folded, back stiff.

"I'm just saying, if the blame's gonna fall on someone, it won't be him," Jack says shortly. He picks up the laptop and folds it under his arm. "Bye, Rose. Take care of yourself." With that, he's gone.

Rose takes a few deep breathes to steady herself. "Doctor, what are we gonna do?" she asks.

"You heard him. Nothing," the Doctor says quietly.

Rose is about to protest when she remembers the cameras. "Right," she sighs. "Okay. I'm gonna go have a peek around, see if I can't find anything to take my mind off this. Know any good places?"

"There's a library," says the Doctor. He gets to his feet. "I'll show you."

As soon as they've reached the dusty room, Rose spins around. "We've got to do something," she announces. "We've got to find up about those kids."

"Of course," the Doctor says. "I'll have to bypass the security system."

"And you think you can do that?"

"Most definitely," the Doctor says fiercely.

"How long will it take?"

"A bit," he says.

"Can I do anything?" Rose asks.

"Rose, what Jack did back there, all of it, it was a warning."

"What do you mean, a warning?"

"Think about it!" the Doctor says impatiently.

Rose thinks for a second, and then says slowly, "If he wanted us to keep out of it, why would he show us the tape?"

"Exactly," the Doctor says.

"He's telling us that there's a tape, that there's something down there, but why would he do that?" Rose asks, mind racing. "He was trying to warn us about it. And he'd only do that if we were in danger because of that tape."

The Doctor nods.

"So what's your guess?"

"I'm guessing one of our faithful monitors saw that too," says the Doctor.

"Do you think they're sending someone?"

"I think they're definitely sending someone. And I think they'll be here soon."

"And what's that someone gonna do?" Rose asks.

"I think they're going to make it very clear to us where we stand," the Doctor says.

* * * * *

She comes tomorrow, wearing a thin skirt and suit jacket and holding a clipboard. She's flanked by four soldiers and her hair's pulled up into a tight bun. She has an eyepatch on her right eye. She introduces herself as Sgt. Kovarian.

"We're aware that you've viewed certain footage," she says with a smile that really doesn't belong. The Doctor stands off to the side, glaring at her.

"We're not gonna do anything," Rose says.

"No, you're not," she agrees. "Remote?" She holds out her hand.

The Doctor slides the remote into her hand. "Thank you," she says, and hands it to one of the soldiers, who throws it to the ground and crushes it under his foot.

She turns to the two on her left. "Go close the tunnels," she instructs, "and seal the room off." She turns to the two on her right. "You two, I want you checking on every camera we have up. Make sure it's in working condition."

"Hope you brought provisions," says the Doctor, "because that'll take you a few days."

She ignores him. "Rose Tyler, if I may speak to you in private."

Rose glances uncertainly at the Doctor, but he's unresponsive. She sighs and follows Sgt Kovarian.

Sgt Kovarian leads Rose out of the room until they're in the blinding white lights of the Torchwood tunnels. She turns to her sharply.

"Rose," she says in a sickely sweet voice, "you do know why you're here, don't you?"

Rose wants to punch her in the face. She looks down at the woman's shoes and forces herself to say, "Yes, ma'am", though it comes out through her teeth.

"Why don't you tell me why you're here?"

Oh, she just hates being treated like a child. "I'm here because -"

"Why don't you look at me while you do so?"

Rose brings her eyes to Sgt Kovarian's and glares at her. "I am here to assist the Doctor," she says in a monotone.

"Wrong," says Sgt Kovarian. There's something hard in her voice, something cold. "You are here to assist _us_."

"Us," Rose repeats. "You mean Torchwood, don't you?"

"I mean the Division," says Sgt Kovarian. "I'd like to let you in on a little secret, Rose. We're not the only humans up and kicking in the world right now."

"I know," says Rose.

"Listen anyway. There are people out there who are dangerous, Rose. People out there beyond our walls, they're barely even people anymore. The war changed them. They're violent, brutish, and they've threatened us before. We must defend our borders. And to do that, we need that man in there to build us an arsenal. Do you understand?"

"Yes," says Rose as she visualizes the many gruesome deaths Sgt Kovarian could die.

"I don't think you do. If you did you wouldn't be running around tunnels with cameras or listening to love songs on old music players," Sgt Kovarian spits. "I've spoken to your superiors, Rose Tyler, and I've suggested to them that they add a bit of an incentive."

"An incentive," Rose repeats.

"Yes. You seem to think there are no consequences for your behavior. I suggested that they add some." Sgt Kovarian takes a step closer to her. "They, ultimately, decided to see if you produce any results before taking extreme measures."

"So what, this is me being put on notice?" Rose snaps before she can help herself.

"You have been uncooperative with the Division. They're paying you a large sum of money for a job you're not doing," Sgt Kovarian says. "I suggest you start doing it.” With that, she turns sharply and walks back into the living room.

Rose takes a deep breath, clenching and unclenching her fists. It takes a minute to steady herself, but finally, she walks back into the other room.

Sgt Kovarian is looking through the cabinets, running her fingers over them as she walks between them and examines them. The Doctor is standing stiffly against the wall, arms crossed, face stony. Rose silently walks over and leans against the wall next to him.

"All right?" he says so quietly that she barely hears him.

"Fine," she replies just as quietly. "Tell you about it later."

Sgt Kovarian tries to open one of them, but it doesn't budge. "It won't open," she informs the Doctor.

"Must have gotten that bit wrong," he replies coldly.

She snorts. "You've been building cabinets for years on end and you can't even make the doors open?"

"Guess not," says the Doctor.

She continues to shift through the cabinets. As she does so, the four soldiers come back.

"All cameras in working order, ma'am," one of them says.

"Good." Sgt Kovarian straightens up and turns to the Doctor and Rose. "I do hope this is the last time I'll be seeing you."

"Likewise," Rose says. A corner of the Doctor's lip twitches, but otherwise, his expression doesn't change.

Sgt Kovarian puts on her fake smile again. "You know, Rose, most of the cameras have been working," she says. "We heard what you were talking about the other day."

"What do you mean?" Rose asks.

"You seem to have a habit of stumbling on unfortunate things," Sgt Kovarian replies. "I would suggest treading more lightly." She snaps her fingers, and the soldiers follow her out of the room.

Rose gives herself a moment to collect herself. Then, as calmly as she can, she says, "Don't suppose you'd want to show me another Beatles song now?"

The Doctor stares at her for a second. "Certainly," he says, and goes over to the record player.

"A loud one, please," says Rose. She might be pushing it, but she doesn't care.

He seems to understand, and nods stiffly while he puts it on. He turns it up as loudly as it goes and soon enough, the music is blaring.

"Dance with me?" he says, extending an arm to her.

She nods and steps willingly into him. She wraps her arms around his neck and pulls her face up until it's level with his ear and whispers, "We have to find out what's in those files."

"Agreed," the Doctor mutters back, his breath tickling her cheek.

"She wouldn't have mentioned them if they weren't important."

"I'll have the system down soon," the Doctor promises.

"How soon?"

"I don't know," he admits.

"What can we do until then?" she murmurs.

"We have to act as normal as possible," he replies.

"She said," Rose says, "that if I didn't get you to start building weapons soon, I'll be removed. She said that she recommended additional motivation or something to get me to cooperate."

His grip on her tightens. "Rose Tyler," he says, "I don't make promises very often, but I promise you she won't be able to hurt you."

"I didn't know it was gonna be like this," Rose says.

"It hasn't been before," the Doctor retorts.

"What do you mean?"

"Adric, Zoe, Martha . . . they were good, you know. Well, they tried to be, at least. But they were obedient. They followed orders. You don't."

"I've never done anything remotely rebellious."

"Depends on what you think rebellious is."

"So they think I'm disobeying."

"More than that," says the Doctor. "I believe they're scared of you."

"Scared of me? How?"

"You've been working here, what, three weeks now? Three and a half?" says the Doctor. "Three weeks and you've already discovered a watery graveyard and come close to breaking into top secret files. Rose Tyler, you could do a lot of damage."

"That's not what I want," says Rose.

"Are you sure?"

She pauses, thinking about it. It surprises her, how much she wants to see the Divison fall. She'd love it, she thinks.

This is new. She's always resented the Division a bit, but her social circle was made up of shop girls and grocery store workers. They all disliked the Division a bit for that. But now, she felt a rush in her stomach. She _hates_ them.

"No," she says. "I'm not."

"You're going to have to decide," says the Doctor. "Not yet. But you will. Because Kovarian wasn't lying, Rose, when she was talking about additional motivation."

The song ends and they move apart. Rose wraps her arms around herself as the record player plays grainy nothingness. The Doctor shoves his hands in his pockets as another song starts up, sad and slow.


	7. Chapter 7

"So, you feel like building any weapons yet?" Rose says in lieu of "good morning" the Monday she returns from visiting Jackie.

The Doctor looks up at her, surprised.

For a second, they stare at each other. Then, the Doctor snorts loudly and bursts into laughter.

"Sorry," he says, but he can't stop laughing. "Sorry, but you sound like you're made of wood."

"I do not know what you're referring to," says Rose robotically. "I am merely attempting to complete my assignment and coerce you into building weapons so that we may best the barbaric forces which threaten our borders."

"Stop it," the Doctor laughs. "No, seriously, stop."

"Sorry," Rose says, her face breaking into a grin.

"It's fine," the Doctor says. "Nice to see you're handling this well, actually."

"Yeah, well," Rose shrugs. "Not the worst thing that's ever happened to me."

"What's the worst thing that's ever happened to you?"

"Fourth form," says Rose. "I had a crush on a boy named Josh. He liked building model rockets and everyone kept saying he was gonna be an engineer. He was always talking about the science behind it, and I didn't understand a word coming out of his mouth, but I pretended I did. Anyway, one day on the playground I go up to him and he’s playing with his model rockets and I say, 'Can I help?' He says, 'Sure.' So I'm helping him with his model rockets, yeah, and I'm feeling a bit brave, plus I've seen a lot of romance movies, so I say, 'I've been wanting to do this for a long time.' And he says, 'Really? What, build model rockets?' And I say, 'No, talk to you.' And he says, 'Why?' So I say, 'I really like you.' And he looks at me all seriously and goes, 'Rose, I only like you as a friend.' And then there's this group of girls walking by, and they hear him and start chanting, 'Rose likes Josh! Rose likes Josh!' and they teased me about it for months afterwards."

The Doctor waits for her to continue. When she doesn't, he says, "That's it?"

"What do you mean, 'that's it'? That's downright horrible."

"You were just threatened by a very powerful woman who threatened to ruin your life and you think it's worse to be teased for liking a boy?"

"You haven't been around too many nine year old girls, have you?"

He makes a face and shrugs.

"So what are we doing today?" she asks.

The Doctor bounces up immediately. "I've got something to show you." His face is alive with excitement.

"Really? What?"

"Follow me." The Doctor walks through the living room and through the door to the hallway.

"Wait!" Rose exclaims. "You're leaving?"

"Yup," says the Doctor.

"Really? You're actually gonna walk out this room? _You?_ "

"I'm not a hermit, Rose Tyler. It just so happens I got permission from one Captain Jack Harkness to go for a little trip, and I thought you'd like to come."

"Yeah, sure," says Rose as the Doctor pushes a cabinet away from the wall to reveal a coat rack. There's a long, brown trench coat hanging on it and he pulls it over his shoulders.

"That's nice," she says.

"Thank you." He shoves his hands in his pockets and asks, "Ready to go?"

"Ready!" She gives him a thumbs up and follows him into the hall.

* * * * *

"What is that?" Rose asks slowly, hardly believing her eyes.

The Doctor grins at her. "Well, what's it look like?"

"It looks . . . it looks a bit like those pictures in my textbooks," says Rose. "Except different. Is it a hot air balloon?"

The Doctor nods excitedly. "That's right! Well," he amends, "I suppose I altered it a bit. The basket isn't supposed to be quite so . . . big."

"And . . . it flies," says Rose.

"That it does."

"Is it safe?" she asks.

"Oh, perfectly safe," says the Doctor confidently. "If something happens to the balloon, a parachute on the basket will open. If something happens to the basket, the balloon will let the air out slowly and gradually take us back to earth. If something happens to both of them, our trusty Captain Jack Harkness will be patrolling the area in a handy little aircraft and save us. And if something happens to Jack -"

"I think I get the picture, thanks," says Rose. "So we're taking a hot air balloon to . . . where?"

"That's a surprise."

"Right, and won't someone notice a big, blue hot air balloon appear in the sky?"

"Cloaking device," says Jack, and Rose jumps - she hadn't heard him come up behind her. "Hey, Doc," he says to the Doctor.

"Jack," the Doctor replies with an incline of his head.

"Hot air balloons," says Jack wistfully, staring up at them. "Those bring me back."

 _To what?_ Rose wants to ask, but realizes the story has a higher probability of being extremely sexual than not. She remains silent and nods as if she understands. "Well, it's not gonna fly itself, is it? Let's go!" she says cheerfully.

"Not so fast." Jack reaches into his pocket and pulls out a blindfold.

Rose stares at them. "What are those for?"

"I can't tell you what I'm thinking," Jack says conversationally.

"Your restraint is appreciated," says the Doctor, grabbing the blindfold. "You're not allowed to see where Torchwood is, remember?"

"Why don't you get a blindfold?" Rose asks crossly.

"I built the place, remember?" the Doctor explains. "Their strategy to keep me from revealing its location is to keep me locked up at all times."

"Then how come you're leaving now?"

"I'll tell you," the Doctor says, giving her the blindfold, "when we're in the air."

Rose sighs but puts the blindfold over her eyes. Her fingers fumble trying to tie it, and the Doctor reaches up and ties it for her. "Not too tight, is it?" he asks.

"No, it's good," Rose says, trying and failing to keep her cheeks from heating up. She thinks she can hear Jack chuckling in the background.

"I need to grab something," says the Doctor. "Be right back!" She can hear his trainers slapping the ground as he runs away.

Jack's hot breath tickles her ear as he says in a breathy whisper, "Oh, _Doctor_."

"Shut up!" Rose tries to smack him, but her hand only catches air.

"Don't worry, your secret is safe with me."

"I said can it!" This time, Rose gets some skin, and is rewarded with a soft _oof_ and an accompanying laugh.

"I'm back!" the Doctor comes running back into the room.

"What's that smell?" Rose asks, sniffing the air.

"Never you mind, you'll find out soon enough. Come on!" The Doctor takes her hand (Jack sighs dramatically in the background) and leads her to the basket of the hot air balloon. "Watch your step," he warns, and his voice is much closer than she would have expected. His hands are on her shoulders, her arms and then her sides as he helps her climb into the basket.

"Thank you," says Rose, and she's proud that she doesn't stammer.

"5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . 0!" the Doctor yells, and the hot air balloon leaves the ground. Rose scrambles for something to hold on to and her fingers find the side of the basket. She grips it tightly as she feels the ground begin to move away - like an elevator, but wobbly. "We're off!"

She can hear something moving, shifting - something that sounds like water. "Are we near a lake?" she asks.

"Shh," says the Doctor, but he sounds amused.

It's getting colder, and she's glad she wore a sweater that morning. She pulls the sleeves over her fingers to keep them warm.

"All right," says the Doctor after a few minutes, "I think you can take this off now."

Rose immediately rips the blindfold off and looks around.

They're up pretty high, and when she looks down Europe doesn't look like a collection of individuals, but like a patchwork quilt. She can see cars moving around, but they're so tiny that they look more like a trickling brook than a bunch of people.

The sky is light blue and almost completely cloudless, except for a few wandering wisps. The sun is bright but it's still chilly. The basket of the balloon is bigger than usual, and the Doctor's spread a blanket across it, along with a picnic basket.

"Picnic in the sky?" she asks.

He shrugs. "Thought you'd like it, and they'd never let me go wandering around on land."

"Oh, no, far too dangerous," says Rose. "You might start building cabinets in public, and then what?"

He cracks a smile. "You like it?"

She sits down cross legged on the blanket next to him. "Love it."

He reaches into the picnic basket and begins to take food out of it. He has sandwiches, bananas, carrot sticks and, last but not least, a plate of chocolate chip cookies which he presents with a flourish of his hand.

"Did you make those?" Rose asks.

He nods happily. "When you were sleeping," he says.

"How often do you stay up like that?" she asks.

"A lot," he admits.

"What do you do? Besides make the best chocolate chip cookies in the world, I mean?"

"Build cabinets," he says. "And I've been working on that security system, too."

Rose glances around. "Can we talk about it up here?"

"Yup. I already dismantled the cameras and microphones," says the Doctor cheerfully. "I expect they'll be rather upset about that later."

"Will we get another visit, then?" Rose asks.

"I doubt it. I think they made their point very clear, and they're busy people. Besides," he pours himself a glass of water from one of the water bottles he packed, "they don't give second chances. They've given us one warning. Next time, it won't be a visit, it will be to shut us down."

"Lovely. And we've only been at this what, a month?" Rose asks.

"Almost two months, now," says the Doctor.

"You've been keeping track?"

"Yeah. In a few days, it will have been two months."

"Is that why you're taking me out here?" Rose asks, motioning to the basket. "To celebrate?"

"No," he says.

"Then why?"

"Because you ought to be free," says the Doctor. "Your freedom is one of the most precious things you have, Rose Tyler. It belongs to you and they're trying to take it away."

Rose smiles at him. "You realize there's no such thing as being free, right?"

"Oh, that's not true!" he says. "Lots of people think that being free is the same as having no responsibilities, but being free is being able to choose what responsibilities you have."

"Then I'm not free," says Rose. "I mean, I didn't get to do my job. I got shoved into it, and I don't regret it, I swear, because it's how I met you. But I got pushed in and now I'm being threatened for not doing a job that I never wanted to do. Cause what you said about me, it goes both ways, Doctor. They shouldn't be able to force you to build weapons for them."

"They won't force me," says the Doctor. "I'll never build another weapon for them as long as I live. I'd die first."

"I'll never try to make you," says Rose. "I promise, Doctor, I'm never gonna force you to build one."

The Doctor smiles at her. "I know," he says. "You're different, Rose Tyler. Most people want freedom, but you cling to it. For most people, freedom is something they have, but it's a part of you."

Rose smiles at him nervously. "Thank you," she says.

"Just an observation," he replies, taking a huge bite out of his cookie. "You're welcome," he adds.

"I have another theory," says Rose. "About why you build cabinets. You ready?"

He nods, mouth still full of cookie.

"Okay, so I said it was a statement, and then I said it was a metaphor, and it wasn't either, right? And you said before I was looking at it too linearly, when I said that you were putting stuff in them. But you know what? I think I was right," she says, and is gratified by the surprise on his face. "I was thinking, what if he's putting stuff in there? But that wouldn't do, I realized, cause they're watching you on the CCTV, and they'd see everything you were putting in there. So then I thought, what if you're building things inside the cabinets, and keeping them in there?" She examines his face. "Am I right?"

"You're wrong," he says.

"Darn it! Again?"

"You're on the right track, though. That's the closest you've been so far," says the Doctor. "But wrong again, I'm afraid."

"I'll get it eventually, I swear!"

"I have no doubt," he says. Then he jumps to his feet, shaking the whole balloon. "Look!"

"What!" She gets to her feet more slowly and peers over the edge.

"Look at that," he says almost dreamily.

She stands next to him, so their arms are touching, and looks over the edge. Below them is Branssett Bay. The rays of sun that pierce through the clouds strike it and make it shine. It glitters like diamonds.

"In my day, this was called Cardiff Bay," says the Doctor. "And that -" He points to Branssett Channel in the distance "- was called Bristol Channel."

"Who was 'Bristol'?" asks Rose. "And 'Cardiff'?"

"Actually, Cardiff is derived from the Welsh word 'Caerdydd', which means the ‘Fort of Taff’, which was established by the Romans in -"

"Never mind," says Rose. "Let's just say it's beautiful and forget what it's called."

"It's amazing, though," says the Doctor. "It looks the same as when I first saw it, and it will probably look the same in a hundred years."

"So things haven't changed that much?"

"Things have changed a lot," says the Doctor. He quirks a smile at her. "Suppose you weren’t expecting me to say that."

"You do seem like more of a big picture guy," says Rose. "We're all dust in the grand scheme of things, aren't we? Atoms floating around in a random, chaotic universe."

"Maybe," the Doctor allows, "but this is my life, and it's big to me. I was dying, and then I open my eyes and everything is different. The names of the places I love have been changed, the people I love have been replaced with people I don't even know. The entire world has changed . . . there were hundreds and hundreds of countries before, all communicating with each other, and now I'm trapped in one big one that's built big walls around itself and stated that no one can leave or come in. Maybe in the grand scheme of things that's small, but why should I measure my life on a scale it doesn't operate on? It was big to me, Rose Tyler."

Rose looks at him and thinks that he's a bit like the water beneath him, because when the sun hits him just right, he shines too. And before she can think about it too long, she takes his face in her hands and kisses him soft and slow.

He pulls away almost instinctively, and it's a bit of a jerk, leaving her hands still in the air for a second before she takes them down hastily, her cheeks turning red. "Sorry, sorry," she mutters, mortified.

“No, no, it's fine, really, it's fine," he says, just as embarrassed.

The moment is over. Now the bay is just a bay and the sun is just a sun and she's fumbling for words. "I'm really sorry, I just - I totally misread that," she says again. "God, just . . . just . . . I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize!" the Doctor says.

"Sorry," she says, and covers her mouth. "Dang it, sor - dang it." Her face is burning between her fingertips. Why is it so bloody hot out?

"It's fine, really, I just . . ." He shakes his head. "I can't, Rose, I'm sorry. I'd like to, but I can't."

"It's okay, really. Let's just um . . . let's not talk about it, all right?"

After a moment, he says, "Right."

* * * * *

That night she walks into the living room at four in the morning (she’d woken up thirsty and wanted a glass of water) and finds him awake.

"What are you doing up?" she asks him. He's staring at a wall, lost in thought, and doesn't reply. She hurries over to him. "Doctor!" she yells to get his attention, and he looks down at her, eyes bleary and confused. She grabs his arm and it feels too hot. "When's the last time you slept?"

"I dunno, two days? Three?" He's moving back and forth now, like he can't stay still. "A long time, I think. A very very very long long time."

"You're burning up," she says, moving a hand to his forehead. "I'm calling Jack."

"No!" The Doctor grabs her frantically. "No, you can't call Jack!"

"Okay, I won't!" Rose tries to wriggle away.

"You can't call Jack," he says again. "He'll try to get me to build again and I don't want to!"

"I won't call Jack," says Rose as calmly as possible. "Let me go."

He releases her and moves away, but he's still jumpy.

"You've got to get some medicine," she tells him. "I've got to phone Jack, okay?"

"It was me," he says.

"All right. I'm calling Jack," says Rose, fishing out her phone.

"It was me, wasn't it? I'm not a poet," he says. "But I always thought it was a hamartia, don't you think?"

"I have no idea what you're saying." Rose dials Jack’s number.

"It was me, it was always me, that fatal flaw of mine, can't you see?” The Doctor's running his hands through his hair frantically. "It was me, it was my mind, that's it for me. Everyone's got one and that's mine."

"Well, it certainly is late, Miss Tyler," Jack answers the phone.

"Jack? You've got to come help me," Rose says. "The Doctor's got this really high fever and he's sort of raving about . . . I don't know what, and I think he needs medicine."

"Oh shit," says Jack, snapping into his business voice. "Ask him if he took his meds."

"What meds?" Rose asks.

"Not what you think," Jack replies immediately. "Just ask him."

"Doctor? Did you take your meds?" Rose asks.

"Meds? No, of course not. Why would I take medication? Start thinking, please, Rose Tyler," the Doctor snaps.

"He says no. He seems a bit cross about it," says Rose.

"Hold tight. I'll be there in two minutes, tops. Do not let him do anything!" Jack hangs up.

"Well, that's promising," Rose mutters. "Doctor, what were you saying?"

"Everyone's got a hamartia," the Doctor says more clearly. "For me, it's my mind. I'm always thinking of something, always inventing something. Like that security system, the one that fixes itself. I've stayed up for nights and nights trying to get through it and it won't work."

"Doctor!" Rose gasps, eyes darting to the walls where several cameras perch, recording every word. "Don't talk like that."

"But that's it! Don't you see! My mind, it's my greatest ally and in the end, it's what ruins me. It builds me up and it tears me down. That's my fatal flaw!" the Doctor says.

"All right, it's your fatal flaw," Rose agrees.

"Now you." The Doctor examines her. "I don't know much about you, Rose Tyler, but I think I know what yours is. I think it's your heart."

"My heart?" Rose asks dubiously.

"You're passionate. You love and you don't care about the repercussions. You try to care for people and you try to help them. You're emotional," says the Doctor. "It's what makes you who you are and it's what draws people to you and someday it will be what kills you, Rose Tyler, you just wait and see."

"Stop it," says Rose. "Don't talk like that."

"Am I right?" the Doctor asks. "I used to never ask that, you know. I used to be so sure. I'm always right because I'm the Doctor and I'm a genius. Now I'm always asking myself, is this right? And it scares me so much because most of the time I'm wrong."

"I'm here!" Jack comes crashing through the door.

"Oh no no no! What is _he_ doing here?" the Doctor yells.

"Nice to see you too, Doc." Jack has a small bottle of pills and tosses them to the Doctor. He catches them easily. "Take them."

"Nah, I don't like them," the Doctor says decisively. "They taste like rubbish. Why do good things always taste like rubbish? Make them taste like cinnamon, or root beer. Wouldn't that be neat? If you have enough brains to make them fix your body, you can make them taste good, too."

"Hey Doc, just take it," Jack snaps. "It's four in the morning and I was just in a warm bed full of a very lovely someone that I really did not want to have to leave."

The Doctor rolls his eyes but takes two pills out and dry swallows them. Rose is slightly impressed -- she can barely choke pills down with the aid of water.

"He's gonna get super sleepy right now," says Jack. "Why don't you take him to his room?"

"I don't know where it is," Rose says.

"I know where it is," the Doctor offers.

"Yeah, you'll probably pass out in the hallway on the way there," Jack sighs. "Come on." He walks over to a keypad on the wall, presses in the number "7429"(Rose peeks and sees them, though she might have gotten the 2 and the 4 mixed up), and wall slides to reveal the hallway. "Come on, Doc."

The Doctor seems tempted to complain, but follows Jack anyway. Rose trails behind them.

She's never seen the Doctor's room, and despite the late (or early) hour and the lack of sleep, she can't help but be a bit excited by the prospect. But when she and Jack finally reach the Doctor's room and Jack pushes the door open, she's greeted by white walls. There's not even a bed, just a mattress pushed crookedly against the blank walls and there's no bedside table. The mattress has a sheet and a few blankets strewn across it, and that's it. The lonely mattress is the only thing in the room.

"Hasn't he got any pajamas?" Rose asks as Jack unceremoniously dumps the Doctor on the mattress.

"Probably, somewhere," says Jack. "I bet they're in one of the many cabinets."

"Doctor, have you got any pajamas?" Rose asks him, but he’s already out of it, eyes unfocused and staring at the ceiling.

"Well, thanks anyway," says Rose. "What's the meds for, anyway?"

"Heart problems," says Jack. "Apparently being frozen for fifty years has a toll."

"I'd imagine so," Rose sighs. "Sorry to wake you."

Jack shrugs. "It's fine." He shoves his hands in his pockets and says, "Rose, I'm sorry."

"For what?" Rose asks.

"For Kovarian, for you not being able to leave Torchwood, for . . . well, all of this," Jack says.

"You could always let me out," Rose hints.

He smiles slightly. "Nice try, kid. I have my orders and I'll follow them."

"I get it," says Rose. "Really, I do. Don't worry about it."

Jack shifts from side to side for a moment and opens his mouth like he wants to say something. Then, for a split second, his eyes flicker to the wall, and he pauses. "Just . . ." He sighs, and runs a hand through his hair. "Good luck, Rose," he says, and with that, he's walking away.

"Rose," says the Doctor.

"I'm right here," says Rose.

"What time is it?" he mutters, though his speech is slurred, so it comes out more like, _Whuhtuhhssit?_

"About four," says Rose.

"Sorry," the Doctor says.

"It's fine, I was awake anyway."

"No . . . not about that." The Doctor's eyelids are fluttering like he's trying to stay awake. "Back there . . . I shouldn't . . . shouldn't have said that."

"It's fine," says Rose. "It was the fever talking."

"It's not . . . fair to you."

"What's not fair to me?" Rose asks, going to sit down on the mattress next to the Doctor.

"Not fair . . . to be stuck . . . with me."

"No, no. Don't say that," says Rose. "Told you I liked it here, didn't I? I meant it."

"I . . . know you did," says the Doctor. "But I . . . I'm not good . . . for you."

"Why not?" says Rose. "I'm serious. You're brilliant, you're funny, and you're the nicest person in the whole bloody building. Why are you 'not good for me'? Cause you made mistakes in the past? Everyone makes mistakes, Doctor. I'm not gonna hold them against you."

"You weren't . . . there," says the Doctor.

"It doesn't matter -"

"No!" The Doctor grabs her arm. "You weren't . . . there . . . during the war . . . You didn't see it . . ."

"Didn't see what?" Rose asks.

"The . . . weapons." The Doctor's beginning to drift off now, but he's fighting against it with all his might, holding on to his arm. "Ace . . . Susan . . . They died, they all died."

“That wasn’t your fault.”

"It was me."

"No." Rose pets his hair back away from his face. "No, Doctor, it wasn't you, I swear."

"My . . . weapons."

Rose's skin goes cold for a second. "What did you say?"

"My . . . weapons . . . They used my weapons . . . They destroyed everything . . ." The Doctor's eyes are beginning to close. "I don't know . . . I don't know how they got them . . . but they were me."

There's nothing she can say. He's half asleep anyway. Instead, she wraps her arms around him and sings him to sleep the way Jackie did when she was a child. 

"Hey now, hey now, don't dream it's over. Hey now, hey now, when the world comes between us," she sings. "They come, they come to build a wall between us. We know they won't win.”


	8. Chapter 8

She wakes up first, thank God. After the kiss, it would be slightly humiliating to have him wake up with her sleeping next to him, arms still wrapped around him.

She gets up quickly and escapes to the kitchen to begin breakfast, trying to fight off the humiliation from the day before. Still, as busy as she keeps her hands, she can still remember the look on his face, the feeling of him jerking away from her. Damn it.

He sleeps in for a long time, and she decides it's probably the medication taking effect, as well as the sleepless nights. When he finally walks into the kitchen, his suit now rumpled and his feet bare, she’s already eaten breakfast, washed the dishes, and put the food away.

"There's some leftovers in the fridge," she says, and he just nods, rubbing the bleariness from his eyes.

"So why didn’t you tell me?" she asks as he walks back into the room with a tupperware container full of cold scrambled eggs. She notices that he doesn't bother warming them up, he just starts eating them. "A heart condition. That sounds kind of important."

"I don't like taking the medicine," he says simply.

"Well, not trying to tell you what to do, but you seem to get pretty sick without it," she says.

"I know," he replies.

"So why don't you like it?"

"It makes me feel . . . weird," he says, and she suspects there's more to the story, but she also has something else to talk about.

"Look," she says as firmly as she can, praying that he doesn't see the blush forming in her cheeks, "we need to talk about what happened yesterday."

"I thawuu dennetwan natawabaah."

"Um, what?"

He swallows the food. "I thought you didn’t want to talk about it."

"Yeah, well, it's been driving me crazy, so . . ." She runs a hand through her hair. "Look, I said I was sorry, and I meant it. It's fine if you don't feel, you know, that way about me, but I thought I should let you know, for the record, that I do feel that way about you."

"Right," he says.

"So . . . yeah," she ends lamely. "Feel free to jump in at any time."

He sighs and pushes the tupperware to the side. "It's not that I don't . . . necessarily feel that way," he says slowly. "It's that even if, hypothetically, I did feel that way, there's not anything I could do about it."

"So you do feel that way?" she asks.

"I didn't say that."

"So you don't feel that way."

"I didn't say that either."

She blows air out of her mouth, frustrated. "Well, now would be a good time to say something."

"That's the thing," he says. "If I did or didn't feel that way wouldn't matter."

"How can you say it doesn't matter?" she snaps. "It matters a hell of a lot to me."

"No, but you don't understand," he shoots back.

"You're right, I don't, because you're not explaining it to me."

"Rose, regardless of my feelings, I could not pursue a relationship like that with you," he says firmly.

"Why not?" she asks. She pauses. "Is it because of the war? I mean . . . before the war? Did you have a family?"

"I did," he says evenly. "And now I don't."

"And you're not over that," she says. "I understand."

"No, you don't." He's pacing now, back and forth, jittery and nervous. "Rose . . ." He sighs, runs a hand through his hair. "People who get close to me usually end up getting hurt," he says finally. "It's not their fault, it's the circumstances, but that's how they end up. Hurt or dead."

"And you don't think I can handle it?"

"That's not what I meant," he says immediately.

"It is, kind of, though," she sighs.

"Yeah, a bit," he admits.

"So what?" she asks. "You don't trust me? Or you don't think I'm strong enough?"

"Rose," he says firmly, "you are the only person I trust. The only one. Please, don't start to doubt that."

"But you don't trust my strength," says Rose.

"I didn't say that."

"Yeah, you did, when you said you don't think I can handle it!"

"That's not what I meant!" he yells. "I meant you're young and you don't know what you're getting into!"

"They just threatened me!" snaps Rose. "They just threatened my family! And you don't think I know what I'm getting into? They made it pretty damn clear!"

He starts to say something, but she cuts him off. "No," she snaps. "There's this whole idea that men have, Doctor, like it's romantic to protect the girl you love. But that's just saying that she's weak and you're strong. Let me protect myself, and trust that I can handle it."

He looks at her hard for a minute. His gaze might have made her uncomfortable before, but now she just glares at him back. After a minute, he says, "All right."

"All right?"

"All right, you're right. All right, I trust you. You can handle yourself, Rose Tyler."

"Thank you," she says. "So, gonna be making more cabinets today?"

"I'm done making cabinets," he replies.

"What do you mean, 'done'?"

"I mean I've finished. I've accomplished what I wanted to accomplish," he says.

"So . . . you've just stopped," she says slowly. "You're just . . . not gonna build cabinets anymore, is that it?"

"That's it," he replies.

"Wow. Are you gonna build other things, then?" she asks. "Like maybe WEAPONS?"

He laughs. "No!"

"Are you sure? Because building weapons sounds like so much fun! I mean, if I could build anything, it would definitely be weapons . . ."

"Stop," the Doctor groans.

"Well, then," Rose says with a yawn, "what are you gonna do with yourself all day, Doctor?"

"I don't know," he says simply. "What a funny thing that is. I've got hours and hours and nothing to fill them with."

"Didn't know I was so dull."

"Ha, ha, Rose Tyler. I mean, I've got no notion of what this day is gonna bring."

"Well, we could go explore the many corridors behind that slide out wall," says Rose.

"Right, because that worked out so well last time."

"We could listen to music."

"All day?"

"Well then," says Rose, irritated, "what do you suggest?"

"I think there are more albums upstairs," the Doctor sighs. "We could go get them and bring them down, if you wanted."

"Great. We can brainstorm while we do that," says Rose, getting to her feet.

But when they get upstairs, they don't go straight for the albums. "What are you doing?" Rose asks, startled, as the Doctor turns away from them and opens the door to a closet.

"I think there are some more in here," he says. "Help me look?"

"Ugh, fine." Rose walks over to the walk-in closet. 

The Doctor shuts the door behind them and says, "I can't get past the security system."

Rose jumps, startled. "Cameras!" she hisses.

"None in the closet. They're not the most creative of thinkers," says the Doctor dismissively. "Rose, I've tried everything. I can't penetrate the system from one isolated point, it's too clever for that."

"Heh heh. Penetrated," says Rose. At the look on the Doctor's face, she grows serious. "Fine, right, okay. You're trying to get in from . . . what was it, isolated points?"

"Yes."

"So, uh . . . what’s that mean, then?" Rose asks.

"Different points the system comes out at, like security cameras," says the Doctor.

"Okay, well try getting at it through the heart," says Rose. "There must be, like, a central control panel or something."

"There's not," says the Doctor.

"Don't be stupid, there must be."

"I built the system, Rose, and there is no control panel!" He runs a hand through his hair. She's noticed that he does that when he's agitated. "I remember specifically thinking that having some sort of central control would make it too easy to disable!"

"But there _must_ be, because how else could those troops Kovarian sent in check all the cameras that quickly? You said it would take days, and it took them about twenty minutes. How could they have done thought without, I dunno, checking into some sort of . . . mainframe, is that the right word?"

The Doctor stares at her.

"Sorry, did I just say something really d -?" She’s cut off when he throws her arms around her and pulls her into the most suffocating hug she’s ever been in.

“Rose Tyler, you are brilliant! That is _exactly_ what I needed! Of course!" He says, squeezing her tightly. "They must have installed it after I left," he mutters. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

"Uh . . . no problem," Rose wheezes.

He releases her. "This changes everything. Miss Tyler, I'll have the security system down by tonight."

"By _tonight_?"

"Be on notice," he says seriously. "Once it's down, it will immediately start repairing itself. I can't guarantee us anything above ten or fifteen minutes."

"Okay, so be prepared?"

"Be prepared," he says. "And we've been in this closet far too long. They'll think we're doing something funny in here."

Rose's face goes bright red and she quickly turns away to hide it. The Doctor doesn't notice, as he's too busy pushing the door open and walking back out.

* * * * *

It happens that night.

She's making some tea when the lights go out and the Doctor runs in and says, "Ten minutes."

She sets the kettle down immediately. "Jack?"

"Running around like a chicken with its head cut off."

"Don't let him go to his office." And with that, she's gone, pausing only to grab her backpack. She takes the stairs two at a time, the elevators not working due to the lack of power.

She bursts into Jack's office and goes straight for the file cabinets. She yanks BLAIDD DRWG open and pulls out two handfuls of files. "Time for some answers," she mutters as she fills her backpack with as many files as she can.

She gets back down to the sub basement, but the Doctor's gone. Distracting Jack, she assumes, and pulls some files out and opens them.

JANE FOSTER WHITE is the child in the first file. She's a young girl with dark curls and brown eyes. Date of birth - September 7, 2025. Date of death - August 3, 2027. Cause of death - Extensive exposure to radiation.

ALEXANDER CARL JONES is second. He's paler and skinnier, with eyes shrunken in. He looks sick. He wasn't a year old when he died. Cause of death - chemical experimentation in the brain.

Jessica Lousie Harlton, Patrick Cole Birkwood, Melody Samantha Pond, Cameron Elizabeth Settleton, James Liam Black, on and on the names go. Radiation, experimentation, chemicals, transplants, brain surgery, removal of major organs, injection of poisonous substances, on and on and on. At first, all the children die before the age of three, but as the records go on, some survive, but only those deemeed "inconclusive."

Rose's hands are shaking by the time she reaches a file with no pictures or names of children in it. Instead, there's a report. _Project BLAIDD DRWG is deemed UNSUCCESSFUL,_ the tiny text reports. _Objection: to create human with capabilities beyond humans. Primary objective to win war, secondary to defend borders. No child displayed these capabilities. Testing will officially close January 1, 2089. Any children undergoing experimentation will be released. Names of current children: Thomas John Smallton (Oct 7 2088), Emily Patricia Lilton (April 22 2087), Rose Marion Tyler (Feb 3 2087) . . ._

Rose slams the file shut and throws it on the table. Her ears are ringing and she feels nauseous. The words are still swimming in her mind: _Unsuccessful . . . primary objective . . . beyond humans . . . no child displayed these capabilities . . . testing will officially close . . . any children undergoing experimentation . . . current children . . ._

Rose Marion Tyler.

If there was a stupid chair somewhere she might sit in it, but instead she just freezes, like a deer caught in headlights.

How were they selected? Because she knows her mother, and there is no way Jackie would ever give her child over to genetic experimentation by the government. That means they didn't ask, they just took. Jackie probably doesn't even know.

Her fingers are moving despite her brain telling them not too, and they pick through the remaining files until they find hers. _Rose Marion Tyler._

She recognizes herself despite her youth. She must be about one, wispy blonde hair flying out from her head, round puffy baby cheeks and a mouth shaped like an O. She's staring at the camera, bewildered.

According to the file, she underwent chemical energy injections to the brain. She doesn't know exactly what it means, but she has a feeling it has something to do with her random panic-attacks-that-aren't-panic-attacks-at-all.

"Oh my God," she says. "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God oh my God oh my God."

And then, at the worst moment possible, the lights flare back on and dozens of cameras are suddenly filming her surrounded with top secret files, and holding her own.

It's like her brain's been overloaded. She tosses the file to the ground like it's burned her, and tears prick in her eyes, because she's done. She is so, so done, and she knows it, too. It feels like everything's collapsing, coming down around her, and it's over.

She hears the Doctor’s voice, loud and brash and yelling, "I don't know! I didn't do anything to the power, Jack, I swear!"

The doors open and Jack and the Doctor walk in and find her, standing frozen in the middle of the room, eyes wide and mouth open and behind a table covered in files.

Jack swears loudly. "What the hell did you - Rose, what were you _thinking_? Please tell me those are not the top secret files from my office!"

She doesn't say anything, and he swears again. "What part of 'be careful' didn't get through to you? Do you have any idea what you've done?"

"Rose," says the Doctor quietly, "Rose, what's wrong?"

She's shaking, she can feel it, and she can only point to her file. He walks over, carefully, picks it up off the table slowly, and opens it. His eyes go wide and he sucks in a breath, stunned.

"Genetic experimentation," she says, and suddenly she's not scared, she's not shocked. Her mind kicks into gear, and she's furious. "Genetic experimentation!" she shouts. "That's what they've been hiding! It's been going on for over fifty years, they've been experimenting on kids, on babies! That's what all those bodies were, that's what the tunnels under Torchwood are for, they're for sneaking the bloody corpses out!"

"Rose, stop," says Jack in a low voice, as the Doctor flips through more files. "Just - just put those down, okay?"

"Manufacturing weapons," says the Doctor, setting the files down. "You branched out after me, haven't you?" He sounds almost dangerous, and for a second Rose can see the warrior underneath the surface. "You used children as the weapons."

"Wait a second," Jack says firmly. "You think I knew about this?"

"You work for them!" Rose shouts. "You help them! You locked them away and you kept them a secret and you . . . you protected them!"

"You think I had a choice?" Jack shouts back. "You think I signed up for this job? Did _you_ have a choice, Rose?"

She can't even think, because it's so unfair and so infuriating, but she can hear her voice yelling, "They're awful! They can't be our government and say they're   
'protecting' us from outside sources and then kill our kids! They're the ones we need protecting from, and I hope to God that they get taken down! I'll do it myself!"

"Rose!" The Doctor and Jack yell, and the Doctor grabs her arm and drags her away.

"What - what's going on?" Rose gasps as he opens the wall door with his screwdriver and pulls her into it.

"It's over, it's over," the Doctor mutters, and he pulls out his phone and he's dialing some numbers. "Martha?" he says into it. "Martha, it's over. Get down here immediately. I told you, it's over, we've got to leave!"

He brings Rose to her room. "They'll be out in two minutes. Maybe five minutes tops. Grab as much as you can and meet me back in the living room. Hurry!" He sprints off, dialing another number on his phone.

"What's going on?" she screams after him, but he's gone, so she runs to her suitcase and grabs as much clothes as she can. She shoves them in, and her books, and her phone and everything she owns and pulls them out the door, hurrying to the living room. Jack is gone, and she's got no idea where.

"Doctor!" she says as he runs into the room, a suitcase of his own in his hands. "Tell me what's happening, now!"

"Grab the files," he orders. "I'll explain on the way, promise."

"Explain what?" She grabs her backpack and shoves the files back in.

"The Division is coming, and they'll either throw you in jail for treason or have you outright killed," he says as he takes a key out of his pocket and opens one of the cabinets. "I was hoping this could wait, but you've put a bit of a rush on things." He grabs her backpack and tosses it into the cabinet, then her suitcase and throws it in, too. Then he climbs in after it. "Get in!" he snaps at her.

"Get into a cabinet?" she replies.

He leans out the door and grins at her. "It's not a cabinet," he says. "It's a TARDIS." He motions to her furiously. "Now come on!"

* * * * *

The first thing she thinks is, _It's bigger on the inside._

Her voice exclaims, "This is impossible!"

"Nope, not impossible," he replies. He's running up to the circular control panel, fiddling with the many pieces around it. "Highly unlikely? Sure! But definitely not impossible."

“But - but - how?” she stutters.

"Multidimensional," he says simply.

"Oh right, of course," she replies breathlessly. "Multidimensional. Obviously."

He grins at her as he yanks a level, causing the TARDIS to tilt furiously. Rose grabs a railing to keep herself from falling. She walks up to the where he runs around the controls, looking around.

"So this is why you build cabinets," she says breathlessly. "Not a political statement, not a metaphor, not cause you feel like it. The whole time, you were building this."

"That's the epistemology of cabinets," he replies. "How do you even know it is a cabinet?"

She laughs, though it comes out a bit hysterical. "Wow. Um, well, okay then. I'll never take anything for granted again." She spots a chair and sinks into it gratefully.   
"Gosh. My God. Is this happening? Is this even real?" she asks him.

He moves away from the controls to kneel in front of her, his face somber. "Rose, I am so, so sorry," he says sincerely. "I had no idea what was in those files. I assumed they'd be military secrets or strategies or something of that nature. Manufactured children? I didn’t know."

"And I'm one of them," she says, her voice small. "Doctor, I'm one of those manufactured kids. My God, I'm . . . I'm not even human, am I?"

"Stop that," he says firmly. "Rose Tyler, you are absolutely, one hundred per cent human. More human than them, I'll tell you that much."

"I'm just . . . I'm some sort of . . . freak," she sniffs, dangerously close to crying.

"Can I tell you a secret, Rose? Well, it's not really a secret," he admits. "But can I tell you it anyway?"

"Sure," she says.

"I've got two hearts."

She blinks. "Um . . . you what?"

"You heard me right. I've got two," he says. "They couldn't properly restart my heart after they froze me, so they just stuck in another."

"How would that even _work_?" she gasps.

"Basically, my heart was beating too slowly when I was frozen. It hadn't stopped, but it couldn't pump as much blood as I needed to survive. I was gonna die, and they decided to do surgery and put in a secondary pump in order to regulate the blood." He takes her hand and moves it, first to the left side of his chest, then to the right. Sure enough, there are two beats. "Two hearts," he repeats. "Well, technically, one heart and one helper, but let's just go with 'two hearts'. So don't talk to me about being a freak, Rose."

She laughs. "Blimey, a man with two hearts and a girl with chemical energy injections in her brain. We're quite a pair!"

He laughs, too. "That we are, Rose Tyler. That we are."


	9. Chapter 9

"So, you said you would explain," she says as he gets back to his feet.

"Right, yes. Well!" He claps his hands and leans against the machine. "After I was revived," he begins, "I was very, very angry. Against the Division, against Torchwood, against all of it. Not only did I refuse to build weapons for them, but I actively tried to sabotage them. They were beginning to think I was more of a liability than an asset when a woman named Donna Noble stepped in."

"Donna Noble? Who's she?" Rose asks.

"Donna Noble works for the tech department of Torchwood. She's a monitor, meaning she builds and controls the cameras, but she's also a bit of a secret agent," he says. "She's a bit of a genius, too. She built these camera drones in order to spy on what you might know as the 'outside forces', though they call themselves the Dinami."

"The Dinami?" she says.

"Yes, it's Greek for 'power' or 'strength'. It's a bit of a take off on 'the Division', I think," he says. "Anyway, Donna, like us, no longer believes in the Division. She's seen the ugly side of it and she wants to escape. She collected information of the Dinami and deleted it before the Division could see, and she's been planning to join them. She contacted them and told them of her mission, and they asked her for one thing."

"Information on the Division," says Rose.

"Exactly. And Donna's not the only one defecting. There are other people in on it," he says.

"Martha," she says.

"Yes, Martha is one. So is the Director of Experimental Sciences, Clara Oswald. She helped get Rory in place. The pilot," he adds. "She gave him references that helped him move from a nurse to a pilot. Rory's job was to be a good escape route in case one was needed. That was before, of course, I built the TARDIS."

"So the TARDIS is a ship? How does that work?" Rose asks. "It's a _cabinet_. How's it fly?"

"It doesn't exactly ‘fly'," the Doctor says. "It's more like - like teleportation, I suppose. See, Rose, when Torchwood began, it wasn't only about building weapons, it was about discovering things. A discovery I made was that time is an energy that fuels everything around us. This energy is in everything and around everything and it's pushing us forwards. I thought, harness this energy and you've got a real weapon on your hands."

He fidgets. "It was just a theory, but it caught on like fire. Suddenly everyone on all sides of the war wanted this energy. And it was a Welsh scientist by the name of Rees who first managed to harness it by creating a machine with attracted time energy to it. It condensed, a bit like a cloud, except not really, more like a black hole," he says. "But it was very difficult to predict the consequences. Time energy is erratic, and unforeseen things happened. Rees died, like the life had been sucked out of him."

"The children," says Rose. "They were trying to inject them with time energy?"

"The machine he built was modeled on a human brain," says the Doctor, "if a human brain could process information faster than the speed of light. Nevertheless, many believed that with the right equipment, the human brain could be a very good conductor of time energy."

"But it killed him!" Rose exclaims, indignant.

"Yes, but I believe the scientists behind Blaidd Drwg were hoping that prolonged exposure to much, much smaller bits of time energy would result in a sort of immunity," says the Doctor.

"But it just killed them too," Rose remarks flatly.

"Yes."

"But some of the kids," says Rose, remembering something, "some of them were dismissed for being 'inconclusive'."

"Yeah, and I'm guessing those are the ones that they put so little time energy into them that it barely affected them at all. Like I said, we already have time energy in us. In fact, it’s part of what makes us up. Our brain is chock full of time energy, and it helps process thoughts and run nerve transmitters. They probably added such small bits of it to the children that nothing happened." He pauses to think for a second. "Well, I'm sure it had some consequences, but nothing major."

"That's what happened to me," says Rose.

He's quieter now, just looks at her.

"Sometimes, Doctor, this thing happens," she admits. "It's like I suddenly tune in to everything around me, I can hear it and feel it. The time energy, I mean. I can feel it moving around me."

"What do you mean, you can feel it?" he asks, frowning.

"I don't know, I just - I can hear it moving around me, and it's like I'm aware of all of it," says Rose. "They injected it into my brain, didn't they? That's why that happens."

"Yes," says the Doctor, "yes, I think so. That's interesting, though. I don't know why - I'd want to learn more about that."

Rose smiles shakily. "Well I suppose we'll have all the time in the world, now that we're running away from the government."

"Yes, about that," says the Doctor. "That's where the TARDIS is taking us. It took a long time, a very long time, but I basically tweaked Rees's model, altered the design a bit, and used it as the engine of the TARDIS. It works on the assumption that time energy is lazy - that is, if we try to open a wormhole from one place to the other, it will just spit us out and close the wormhole off. So I program in where we want to go and basically shove open part of the universe, and it spits us out, and we just . . . kind of end up there."

"We just kind of end up there," Rose repeats. "You've got no idea how it works, do you?"

He looks offended. "Of course I do, I built it!"

"You got lucky."

He sighs. "A bit lucky, yeah."

"Knew it," she mutters. "So where are we off to?"

"The ruins of Greece," says the Doctor. "The ruins which were previously part of Ancient Rome and have been preserved for centuries."

"Why there?"

"That's where the Dinami is set up."

"Again," Rose repeats, "why there?"

"The Romans were great architects," the Doctor explains. "They built these amazing systems way before their time. You know they had running water, hot and cold? Plumbing too! Flush a toliet and the water goes right down! They were brilliant! Anyway, since Europe is basically the only place with power, the Dinami went to the Roman ruins. They're settled in the Arcadian mountains. They get the water from the mountains, it runs down to where they’re settled, the plumbing empties out into the lake. They're good."

"And Martha and Clara and Donna and Rory?" Rose asks.

"Rory should have gotten them out," he says. "They'll meet us at the Dinami, I believe."

"And then what?"

"Then we regroup," says the Doctor. "Like I said, you put a bit of a rush on our plans. We weren't supposed to get out until we had as much information possible."

"Will they be angry? The people who run Dinami, I mean," says Rose.

"I suppose that depends on how much information we've collected."

"Who runs Dinami, anyway? How big is it?"

The Doctor shrugs.

"You don't know?"

He shrugs again. "It's all kept very secret. All I know is what Donna and Martha have told me."

"They could be mad, for all you know!"

"Well then at least we'll fit in!" he responds. "And we'll find out as soon as we step out those doors." He points to the entrance of the TARDIS.

"What do you mean? We haven't mov - oh." Rose's mouth falls open. "Well, that's . . . That's handy."

"Isn't it, though?" The Doctor strides over to the door and Rose follows him, arms folded around herself. "Ready to meet the Dinami, Rose Tyler?"

"No," she says nervously. When he looks at her, she smiles and says, "Well, what are you waiting for?"

He pulls open the doors and reveals - 

\- a blank wall.

"A bit anticlimactic," Rose comments.

"Darn it!" He runs his hand over the wall. "Just a minute. Got to re park." He closes the doors and runs over to the control. The TARDIS twists sideways so suddenly that it sends Rose flying across the room. The Doctor manages to grab on to a railing before he hits the opposite wall.

"Right, there we go!" He runs back to the doors as Rose picks herself up and dusts herself off.

"Right," she mutters as she follows him.

She steps out into what appears to be a Roman living room. It's a bit dusty and the walls are made out of brown concrete. There are pillars holding up the walls and chairs with cushioned seats to sit on. It's nicer than her flat, and it was built over 2,000 years ago.

A woman is leaning against the wall with bright red hair and a black jacket. She's laughing at the Doctor. "That was a rubbish parking job," she comments, and Rose takes note of the Scottish accent.

"You try steering a multidimensional ship that runs on time energy," he shoots back.

"Touche." She offers her hand to him. "Captain Amelia Pond."

"Pleasure. I'm the Doctor," he replies.

"I know." She moves to Rose to shake her hand. "Rose Tyler, right?"

"Uh, yeah. Nice to meet you," says Rose.

"Nice to meet you, too. Both of you," Captain Pond replies. "I'm glad you made it out of there okay. We were a bit worried when Rose began yelling that things -- though it's good to know you're on our side," she adds. "Let's walk." She pulls some curtains aside and walks outside.

"Uh -- Captain Pond?" Rose asks, jogging after her.

"Call me Amy," she says.

"Amy," says Rose, "how'd you know what I was saying?"

"We tapped into the Division cameras," she replies. "Courtesy of one Donna Noble. We've been monitoring it for awhile, trying to get as much information as possible. Unfortunately, they're careful."

They seem to be in the rich part of Ancient Rome, going by the niceness of the houses around them. Some are two story, some are one, some have fountains and most have patios. 

"Here we go," says Amy. She waves her hand at the sky and yells, "Hey, Rory!"

At first, Rose thinks Amy's a bit daft, because there's nothing up there. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a huge, sleek military plane appears in the sky, wings jutting out like they'd been there the whole time. Rose’s eyes widen and she gasps, turning to the Doctor. "Where'd that come from?"

"Cloaking device," says the Doctor. "Light waves pass through the plane and the people on it."

"Then how'd Amy see it?"

"The light manipulation isn't perfect. You can usually see shimmering and distortion around it, particularly when they're moving."

Rose whistles. "Wow."

"I know," he says, sounding like a child at Christmas.

"Did you design that?"

"Nah. Wish I had, though. They're brilliant," he says.

The plane lands in a courtyard area, and Amy jogs towards it, a huge smile on her face. Rose sees why in a moment, when a young man climbs out of it, lifts a black helmet from his head, and smiles back at her. Amy runs into his arms and they share a hug and then a deep, passionate kiss that goes on for quite a bit, until Rose turns away, a bit uncomfortable.

The side doors to the plane open and Martha Jones leaps out, before turning to help a short young woman with brown hair and a blue dress out. Behind her is an older redheaded woman who refuses Martha's help and jumps out on her own.

"Hey, Doctor!" Martha calls, waving.

"Martha!" The Doctor's face splits into a grin, and he runs up to them. Rose follows, feeling a bit like she did when her mother brought her to her book club and introduced Rose to all her middle-aged friends.

"Rose Tyler, meet Donna Noble and Clara Oswald. Donna, Clara, this is Rose," says the Doctor.

"Nice to meet you," says Clara, shaking her hand.

"You, too," says Rose.

"Well it's about bloody time," says Donna bluntly. "I thought I'd never get out of there."

"You're not angry?" asks Rose.

"Are you kidding? '’ve been wanting to leave since the day I got there." Donna shakes her hand firmly and turns to the Doctor. "All right, spaceman, who's leading this thing?"

"That would be me," says Amy, breaking away from Rory. "Just come with me, I'll bring you to headquarters." She sets off at a brisk pace, and everyone follows.

"Spaceman?" Rose mutters to the Doctor.

"Yeah. I don't know why she calls me that," he responds.

Rose laughs. "I see why."

"Really? Why?" he asks, curious.

"I mean, you are a bit . . . alien," she says. "In a good way," she adds quickly.

"Alien?" He squints, considering this. "Huh."

Headquarters turns out to be a two-story building on the edge of where the town meets the mountains. There are three aircrafts in the courtyard, a passenger plane and two military planes, and a few dirty brown trucks parked around headquarters. Rose can't help but to compare it to the Division's extensive collection of aircrafts and pristine black vehicles. She's not very optimistic about the Dinami's chance of survival.

Amy leads them into headquarters, and Rose blinks at the contrast. They're surrounded by the buzzing and whirring of machinery, and in every direction she can see scientists in lab goggles working with equipment she can't possibly begin to understand. There are computers and monitors and screens with charts and graphs on them. Rose blinks and looks at the Doctor, who's gaping, no doubt understanding and fascinated by everything around him.

Amy leads them by the machinery briskly and up to a staircase. The second story is cleaner, with less going on in it. There’' a long marble table with seats around it. In the seat at the head of the table sits a young, small blonde man in a suit. At his side is a blonde woman with her hair pulled back into a tight bun, and an older man in a white button up shirt and a black vest.

The younger man gets to his feet as they walk in and motions for them all to sit. He waits until they take their seats and all of their attention has turned to him before beginning to speak.

"I'm glad to have you here," he says, and Rose immediately recognizes him as a natural public speaker - comfortable, relaxed, calm. "My name is Harold Saxon. This is my wife, Lucy Saxon" he motions to the women "and this is Professor Yana, who manages the sciences and manufacturing around here." They both nod as their names are said.

"Now, first thing's first," says Mr. Saxon. "We need to expect retaliation for this. Do the Division know where we are?"

He poses the question to Rory, who stutters, "Uh, I - I don't think so."

"Definitely not," Clara interjects. "Donna removed all of the tracking on the plane, and I installed the highest quality cloaking devices I could find. Plus, we took such a roundabout way getting here."

"Good. That's good," says Mr. Saxon. "What about any data or records we might have received from them? Is the information valuable?"

"Very," says Donna.

"We must expect them to react defensively based on the information stolen, which means we might not have very much time to capitalize on this advantage," says Mr. Saxon. "Therefore, I suggest -"

"Um, excuse me?"

Mr. Saxon pauses, and Rose gets the idea that he doesn't much like being interrupted. "Yes, Ms. Noble?"

"I didn't just steal the records," says Donna, "I copied them, and took the copies with me while leaving the originals behind. That way, they won't know what we took and why. They won't even know that we took anything."

"Still, we cannot expect them to take this sitting down," says Mr. Saxon, "and as impressive as your abilities are, Ms. Noble, we cannot rely on them being absolute. The Division is both strong and smart." He pauses for a moment, then continues, "And speaking of retaliation, we must evacuate any and all people of personal connection to all of you."

"Why?" says Donna.

"You think they won't use your families and friends to their advantage?" says Mr. Saxon. "The operation will be risky. Therefore, we must ask you to do something difficult. Not only will you list the names of the people you want to save, but the list must be in order of priority."

"In order of _priority_?"

"Who you want us to save first," says Mr. Saxon, "and who we might have to abandon if it comes to it."

They're all silent, the horror sinking in.

"I understand that this is difficult," says Mr. Saxon, "but you must be quick. Every minute wasted is another opportunity for the Division to capture or kill your loved ones."

Mrs. Saxon passes out pens and paper, and Donna and Clara sit, stunned, while Rose immediately puts her pen to the paper and begins to write:

_1\. Jackie Tyler_

She pauses, frozen. That can't be it. She's got friends, mates, people she counts on . . . But not since the Doctor, she realizes. She hasn't seen her friends in months, and since the Division will be looking for specifically people to use against her, there isn't really anyone else. Except -

_2\. Mickey Smith_

There’s no point in adding any of his family to the list. Mickey lived with his Gram, until she died about a year ago, and since then there's been no one. He'll be fine.

She still feels like there should be more, but no more names come to mind, so she adds their addresses and passes the list to Mr. Saxon. A minute later, Clara passes hers forwards. Rose catches the names _Angie_ and _Artie_ scrawled on it, but that's it. Donna passes hers a few second later, and Rose sees that her first name is _Wilfred Mott_. There are more underneath, but that's all she can catch as it goes by. She doesn't see any of Martha's.

"Excellent," says Mr. Saxon. "Now we have to delegate the planes . . ."

"Rory and I can go get Donna's," says Amy. "She has the most, so it makes sense for the most experienced to go."

"I can get Adam to take Clara, and Astrid can take Martha," interjects Professor Yana. "Which leaves . . ."

"I can take Rose," says the Doctor quickly.

"In what ship?" asks Mr. Saxon.

"I've got a . . . for lack of a better word, ship," says the Doctor.

"Do you?" Mr. Saxon raises an eyebrow.

"I could probably take others, too," he begins, but Mr. Saxon cuts him off.

"I don't think so. I think it's best not to put all our eggs in one basket." His eyes scan the Doctor as he adds, "Particularly not a basket that has a history of being so . . . flighty."

Rose's head snaps towards the Doctor, waiting for a look of surprise or a biting remark. To her surprise, he only shrugs. "Fair enough."

"All right? Well, then, let's go!" says Mr. Saxon, clapping his hands, and with that they're all up and scrambling.

The Doctor sprints out of the room and Rose follows closely behind. They break side only to wait for him to open the door of the TARDIS, and then they're in and the Doctor's messing with controls.

"Where does she live?" he asks, and Rose yells the address as his hands fly.

"Oh dear." He frowns at the monitors.

"What?"

"Someone's trying to intercept our signals," he frowns. "This'll be a bit of a doozy, sorry."

"What do you mean, a -" Rose is cut off with a terrific lurch that sends her flying, followed by another, and another. She grabs the railing and holds on for dear life.

"Doctor!" she yells.

"I'm trying!" he yells back.

The TARDIS is shaking, spinning, and they're shaking and spinning along with it. Rose closes her eyes as the hair whips around her head.

"She's trying to shake the signal!" the Doctor shouts. "She's literally trying to throw it off of us -"

And with one terrific BANG, it stops.

"We're here. We've landed," he says, and Rose runs to the door and pulls it open to find the courtyard right in front of her apartment building.

She takes the stairs two at a time. The Doctor pauses to lock the door for a minute and follows her.

As soon as she reaches her apartment, she knows something's wrong. The door is ajar, tilting on its hinges.

"Oh no," she whispers. "No no no no no no -"

She smashes through the door and runs into her apartment screaming, "Mum? Mum!"

The apartment has been decimated. The furniture is still, oddly enough, in the same place it had been before, but the wallpaper has been torn off the walls, the doors off the cupboards, the blinds off the windows. Glass lies shattered on the floor. It's not about destroying her home, it's about showing that they can.

She runs into the kitchen and stops, all the oxygen leaving her lungs quicker than if they'd been sucked out of a vacuum. Because there's her mum, lying on the ground with a bullet through her head and a single black eye patch over her heart. And on the eye patch is red lipstick in the shape of a kiss.


	10. Chapter 10

When Rose was nine, she found a dog wandering around on the roadside.

She spent the better part of two hours attempting to coax it to her with food, toys, and generally nonthreatening behavior. When she'd finally managed to get it near her, she'd been afraid to move because she might scare it off. The dog flinched away from her at first, but as she ran her fingers through its fur, it began to calm down. It ate the food she gave it and nudged its nose against her, asking for more.

Rose could count the dog's ribs, poking through its skin. There was blood matted into its fur and it kept its eyes down and its spine hunched. It walked slowly and with a limp due to having a paw which was really more of a bloody stump than anything else. Rose wanted to carry it home, but it was too big, so she walked slowly and petted it, murmuring encouragements as she did.

Jackie wasn't home -- she worked long hours, and she was rarely home when Rose got there. Rose unlocked the door with the key she wore around her neck and filled a tub with warm water (it was winter, and she assumed the dog was cold). She coaxed the dog in with more food and rubbed the blood out of its fur and brushed it out with one of her doll’s hairbrushes as best she could. At first, the dog resisted, but soon he realized she wouldn't do him any harm and he relaxed.

She named him Bear (his brown fur reminded her of the animal she'd seen on TV once) and made him a collar out of macaroni noodles, random beads she found around the house, and string. He tore the collar off and gnawed at the noodles, but she wasn't angry. He was really a rather well-behaved dog, and didn't bite furniture or pee in the house or anything. She took some bowls down and gave him a food bowl and a water bowl and laid with him, petting him.

Jackie got home a few hours later and was horrified, not only because dogs weren't allowed in the building, but also because Bear wasn't just any dog, he was a Great Dane. Great Danes had been outlawed after the war, when they had been trained to be attack dogs. In fact, no dogs over a certain size were allowed because of their potential risk.

"But he's a nice dog!" Rose screamed as Jackie picked up the phone to call the police. "We can't just kill him!"

Bear whined and put his head in her lap to protest their case.

Jackie was going to tell her daughter to grow up. She was going to say to her that the world was a hard, messy place and sometimes bad things had to happen for the sake of keeping order. But she looked at her daughter's tear-stricken face and she remembered how she felt when she was nine, when her own mother, Rose's grandmother, told her to grow up and accept that life wasn't fair. And she decided that instead of prepping her daughter for a tough life, she was going to try to make her life as good as it possibly could be. So she set down the phone and said, "All right, here's what we'll do."

They drove Bear out to where the city met the forest edge. Rose cried and hugged his neck tightly and he seemed to sense her fear and her confusion and snuggled into her. When they got to the forest, Jackie had to wait a half an hour for Rose to be able to pry her arms off of the animal. She kissed his forehead and petted his matted fur and ran her hands over his emaciated body and he really was a pretty ugly dog, but he was beautiful to her. She told him she loved him and finally got to her feet. He seemed to understand. He didn't try to run after her, just stood and watched her as she and her mother got back in the car and drove away.

Jackie used to tell her stories as she grew up about Bear and his adventures. "He made it past the wall," she said, "and now he's with all of the other big dogs." She told stories about Bear growing up in the pack of dogs and falling in love and having little puppies and Rose ate them up. Soon, Bear faded to a memory, a story that she was told when she was a child. She can still remember them: Bear the Sailor Dog, Bear the Treasure Hunter, Bear the Detective Dog. The stories are tied up in warm hugs and nighttime stories and hot chocolate and the safety that only a good parent can give to a child. Later, as she considered the stories, she realized that Bear couldn't have survived. A dog with a lame leg in a forest full of hunters, both human and otherwise? But by then she was a teenager, and though it made her sad, it was forgotten in a slew of friends and grades and hairstyles.

Bear was Rose's first taste of loss, and she can still remember leaving him behind, getting in the car and driving away, watching his big sad eyes as she left him behind. She remembers how it felt: like a hole being punched into her stomach, like a chunk of her being scooped away and leaving her hollowed out.

But this - finding her mother's body inside the wreckage that used to be her home - this is so much worse. This is more than a punch in the gut. This is tearing her apart.

She can still feel her mother like a phantom limb, like she should be there. It just doesn't make sense that she's gone. She should be here, and alive, and a constant pretense in Rose's life.

She can hear her screaming and can feel the Doctor dragging her away, and she knows he's saying something to her, but her brain is too occupied trying to make sense of this sudden loss to worry about that. She thinks, idly, that either time is smashing down on her all at once, or it has completely stopped. She thinks that maybe there isn't a difference.

The pain comes like crashing waves, and with them comes a realization that hits her like a tidal wave: this is completely and unequivocally her fault. She can blame Sgt Kovarian, and she will, but Kovarian was something to a rabid animal, and Rose essentially handed her mother over to her.

This must be what a black hole feels like - everything being pulled in and somehow you wind up with nothing.

* * *

"Rose."

It's a bit like resurfacing, though it's a lot more sudden. One minute the world has ceased to exist, and the next it's simply there again, like it never left in the first place. Like something has pulled her back to the land of the living, and that something is a word. Her name. _Rose._

"Doctor?" she says.

A pause. Then, "Yeah, it's me."

There's something on her shoulder. She turns to look and finds that it's a hand. Weird. She follows the hand to the wrist to the arm and winds up looking the Doctor in the face.

"What happened?" she asks.

"Do you really not remember?"

She's silent for a moment. "After," she manages to choke out.

"We got Mickey," he whispers. She doesn't know why he's speaking so quietly. As far as she can see, there's no one else with them.

She can't quite process where she is. They must be back at the Dinami base, though, because the walls are made of marble and she's lying on some cushions on a comfortable marble bed. She props herself up slowly.

"Where is he?" she asks.

"With Martha and Donna, I think," he replies.

"Oh, yeah, he'd like Donna. Martha, too. They're so interesting to begin with, but then they'd be even more interesting to him, cause he doesn't know a lot about the government and stuff, so they'd be really different to him," Rose rambles. "Did everyone - did everyone else get out okay?"

"We got everyone out for Clara. Her father, her grandmother, Angie and Archie," he replies. "We got Donna's grandpa and mother out, but her fiancee, Shaun Temple was captured. He worked at the Division, there was no way we were gonna get him out. We got Martha's sister, Tish, and her brother, Leo, out, but her mother and father were captured, and her father's wife, Keisha, was killed."

"Right." Rose's head is spinning. "Was there any - you know - order to the way they killed people off? Or was it by random?"

"I imagine it depends on leverage,” he says. "Martha and Donna are valuable, so the Division gets leverage by taking members of their family hostage."

"And I'm not," says Rose. "That's why they killed my mum, isn’t it?"

He pauses and examines her. "Rose, I think you're in shock."

"Is this what shock feels like? All - fuzzy?"

"You should rest," he decides.

"Don't want to."

"Rose." His voice grows stern. "Don't make me call the doctors and have them bring in medication to put you under. We haven't got much to spare, anyway."

Rose giggles. "You sound like my mum."

She's still laughing as she falls asleep.

* * * * *

When she wakes, her eyelids are too heavy. They drift open and closed several times before she manages to keep them open long enough to take in her surroundings.

Her head feels fuzzy, like there's static playing instead of a channel. She's lying on a couch which must be at Dinami headquarters, judging by the distinctly Roman setting she's found herself in. The room looks vaguely familiar, but she can't recall from where.

"Hello?" she calls, and her voice comes out sounding like rust.

"Hello?" she wheezes again, but the words sound small, so she gives up and gets shakily to her feet.

She knows something terrible has happened. She can feel it the way someone might feel a gunshot wound - you may not remember how it got there, but you know without a shadow of a doubt that it's there.

She's not sure that she wants to remember.

She's pacing the room nervously when the curtains to the next room opens and in walks Mickey Smith.

His eyes widen. "Rose?"

"Mickey," she gasps in relief, and runs over to hug him. He feels awkward underneath her, like wood, and it takes a moment for his hands to move up to her shoulder blades.

"Hey," he says, releasing her. "How - how are you?"

"Um . . ." There's something wrong, she can tell. She's known Mickey since they were both kids, and she knows his tells - the scrunched up nose, the shifty eyes, the way his hand automatically moves to scratch the back of his head. Some part of her, some primal instinct, tells her not to question it. "Hungry," she says instead. "Got any food?"

"Uh, yeah, a bit. Fish and stuff," he replies, still not meeting her eyes. "In the kitchen."

"Right. And the kitchen would be where?"

He points to the curtain he just stepped through, and she nods. "You coming?"

"Nah, I thought I'd just . . ." He lets the sentence trail away. They both know what he's saying. He doesn't want to be around her right now. She pushes past him to the kitchen without another word.

The kitchen is outside, where Clara tends to an oven with two oven mitts and an apron on. It's funny to see Clara in such a domestic setting, as Rose has always imagined her as surrounded by computers and whizzing lights. She falls in very naturally, though, and Rose thinks maybe she's the type of person who just likes being somewhere, doing something.

Two children set at the table, a young boy and a teenage girl. They're clearly siblings, sharing the same dark curls and brown eyes. They both glance up at her and their eyes widen. So whatever it is, they know too.

"Rose!" Clara pulls off the oven mitts and her eyes flutter nervously. "I - how are you doing?"

"Hungry," Rose repeats. It's become a mantra to her. Hunger doesn't require thought or emotion. Just a primal instinct. Easy enough to understand, easy enough to obey.

"Right, right." Clara runs a hand through her hair nervously. "Well, I've made Artie and Angie sandwiches" she motions to the two children "so I could make you one of those, or I've got a souffle in the oven. It might not turn out quite right, though, souffles rarely do. So maybe a sandwich would be safer, huh?"

"Yeah," says Rose, sitting down.

"Okay." Clara turns back to the kitchen counter, looking a bit more sure of herself when she's got something to do with her hands. There's already cheese, tomato and lettuce out, so it takes Clara barely any time at all to prepare a sandwich. She sets in front of Rose carefully, like she's afraid Rose is a bomb that will detonate at any moment.

"Thanks," says Rose, and takes a huge bite. She really is starving.

Angie and Artie are still staring at her. Artie's eyes are big, processing. Rose can tell right away that he's the type of boy who eats up every shred of information that he possibly can. Angie's gaze is a bit more judgmental.

Rose polishes off the sandwich quickly and says, "Got any more?"

Angie lets out a shocked laugh and Clara says, "Angie," in a warning tone.

"What?" Angie snaps. "God! It's like you don't even care," she spits at Rose.

"Angie, I told you -" Clara begins, but then Rose says, "Don't care?" and a hush falls over them.

"Wow," says Angie, popping the 'w' between her lips, and Rose realizes she doesn't particularly want to know what Angie's about to say, but something keeps her rooted to the spot. "That's horrible," she says, and Rose can feel the acid in her voice. "When my mum died, I cried my eyes out. I could barely even sleep, and I _certainly_ couldn't eat."

"Angie, what did I tell you -" Clara says, but Rose gets to her feet, shoving the chair back across the floor with a resounding scrape.

"I'm not really hungry," she says to Clara, but it's like she can barely see the people in the room with her anymore. She turns on her heel and escapes.

She doesn't particularly know where she's going, only that she wants to get away from any and all people on the planet. She finds herself wandering past the houses and in towards the mountains.

It's cooler the closer she gets to them, and they seem to spring to life before her eyes. As she approaches, the terrain becomes less sandy and more rocky. Still, she doesn't slow down until she reaches the trunk of a fig tree. There's a shady spot underneath, and she sits with her back against it and tilts her face to the sky and closes her eyes.

For a long time, she doesn't think, just sits there. She's so lost in the absolute nothingness that comes from a lack of thought that she doesn't hear footsteps approaching. She only hears when a voice says, "Rose."

"Doctor," she says without opening her eyes.

She feels him sit down next to her and finally cracks her eyes open to look at him. He looks a bit deflated, honestly. His hair isn't even sticking up the usual way.

She's not uncomfortable by the way he examines her anymore, but even so, she looks away when he does. "How bad is it?" he asks.

"I don't know yet," she replies. "I don't . . . everything's all muddled up."

"I know," he says.

"Doctor? Was it . . . did you see . . . was there an eye patch?" she asks.

He pauses for a moment, then says, "Yes."

"I wasn't sure if it was real," says Rose. "Does that mean it was Kovarian?"

"We don't know that," says the Doctor.

"But who else could it be? Who else would do that?"

"We don't know," the Doctor repeats. "There's a lot we don't know about the Division, Rose."

"It was Kovarian," Rose says, and it comes out through her teeth. "It had to be. She threatened me. She told me she was going to properly motivate me, remember? She wears a bloody eye patch, Doctor, how could it be anyone else?"

His hand clamps down hard on her shoulder. "Listen to me, Rose, it doesn't matter if it was her or not. Thinking that way isn't going to help. Revenge doesn't help anything."

"It would make me feel a hell of a lot better!" Rose snaps.

"No, it wouldn't!" he retorts. "You know who gets revenge, Rose? Cowards. People who would rather blame someone else for what happened because they think it will get rid of their guilt."

"You think _that's_ why I want her dead?"

"You feel horrible," the Doctor says. "You think it's all your fault. You feel so guilty you think it's going to eat you alive. And it's easier to blame Kovarian than to let that guilt consume you. Trust me, I know."

"You know what happened to _you_ ," Rose says. "You know how _you_ felt." She pushes his hand off and turns to look him in the face. "You know what my first thoughts were, Doctor? I thought that I was to blame, because even if Kovarian had killed her, it was because I let her too close. I thought that Kovarian was something like a wild animal, and I let her loose. But Kovarian isn't a wild animal. She's a thinking, feeling person and she put a bullet through my mum's head anyway. She deserves to die for that."

"And what about you?" the Doctor asks. "Are you going to become a killer like her?"

"I am nothing like her."

"If you kill, you will be. You think Kovarian thought to herself, 'Killing people's mothers sounds like a fun thing to do today'? She killed because she believed she was right. If you seek revenge, that's exactly what you'll be doing."

"You don't understand!" Rose shouts. "I can't think, Doctor. Nothing's fitting together in my head right now, everything's all jumbled out, and all I can think about is my mum and Kovarian. I need to stop her, because if I don't -"

"- you'll be this way forever," he finishes. "I told you, Rose. I know what it feels like."

She opens her mouth to say something - she doesn't know what - but all that comes out is a half-choked sob. Immediately the Doctor's arms are around her and he's hugging her tightly as she cries. The waves are back, and she feels as if the Doctor's arms are the only thing keeping her from going under.

They stay that way for awhile, arms wrapped around each other long after Rose's tears have subsided and the only sound is their lungs contracting and expanding and pushing and pumping air in and out.

After her heartbeat has steadied and she's calmer, Rose asks, "Have I ever thanked you?"

The Doctor’s lips quirk up. "Thanked me? For what? Endangering your life and getting your family killed?"

"You can't honestly think that."

"It's a fact," he says. "If you hadn't been assigned to me, you'd be safe right now. And significantly less knowledgeable about what's been happening around you. But safe."

"Right, and you're totally the one who got me stuck in this situation," Rose says sarcastically. "You requested me, did you?" She shakes her head. "That's absolutely ridiculous, to blame yourself."

"No more ridiculous than it is for you to blame yourself," he replies. "You know, before this, I was a physics professor."

"No way." She stares at him. "Seriously?"

"You're surprised?"

"I assumed you'd be an engineer," she says. "You know, because of the whole building weapons thing."

"I was successful in lots of subjects," he says. “Chemistry, engineering, literature . . . But it was always physics for me. I loved reading, I loved experimenting, but the universe, the way everything was so big but operated on levels so small . . . I loved it. It was the one thing that didn't come naturally to me, the one thing I had to work at and stay up late studying for, and I just loved it. It energized me. I studied it for years and years. The day I got a job teaching and doing research for a university was the best day of my life."

"Universities," says Rose. "I've always wondered what those would be like."

"Didn't think you'd go?"

"Nah. You can only go if you get assigned there, and I was expecting shop girl."

"You'd like it," he says. "But one thing I learned from studying physics is that nothing in the universe happens by choice. Everything in the universe, from quarks to bombs to supernovas, follows its own predetermined nature as perfectly as if it had been programmed."

"So what? God?" Rose asks.

"God? No," he says. "No, I never believed. In fact, I actively disbelieved. The more you study the universe, the more ridiculous all that seems."

Rose snorts. "Wow, you really arrogant, aren't you?"

"Excuse me?"

"You dope," says Rose. "I'm not talking about fluffy white clouds and halos. You just said everything was predetermined, didn't you?"

"Yes, and I'm sure it's by some big man in the sky."

"That's one definition," says Rose. "Come on Doctor, you've studied physics for years and you think that it's not possible there's something you don't understand? Something you can't explain, something beyond your comprehension?"

"Of course I do," says the Doctor impatiently, "but God?"

"Stop picturing a big man in the sky," Rose orders. "Imagine it differently. Imagine God as . . . as a force, or something. Something beyond human comprehension."

"A higher intelligence," says the Doctor.

"Yeah, exactly."

"Hmm," he replies. "That's an interesting theory, but the fact is there's no evidence to support it whatsoever."

"Or, you could argue everything supports it."

They'd been staring up at the sky, and they turn to look at each other simultaneously. For a moment all she can think about is what he said, that the universe is big but works on a small scale, and she thinks it must be true, because he is more than she could imagine but somehow he's also made up of tiny bits. Hair that sticks up and eyelashes and chapped lips and a hint of stubble . . .

"Ahem."

Their heads both jerk to the side and Rose realizes belatedly that his arms are still around them. He yanks them away and jumps to his feet, somehow managing to scrape his arm against the tree. Rose cringes at the noise.

Angie stands, arms folded and smirk playing on her lips. "Clara said I have to apologize," she announces.

"Right, I'll leave you to it," says the Doctor, and before Rose can say anything else he runs away.

Angie's smirk becomes a full-blown grin as she watches him go. She turns back to Rose and raises an eyebrow. "All right, then."

"Thought you came to apologize?" Rose snaps, as she's not in her best mood right now and certainly doesn't want to deal with a bratty teenager.

"Sorry," Angie says flatly.

"Really put your heart into that one, didn't you," Rose says as she goes to follow the Doctor. She stops a few steps away and turns back to Angie. "You know, you really should be sorry. You had no right to speak to me that way, especially after my mum died, because I didn't fit into your narrow-minded idea of what I should be doing. People grieve differently and just because they don’t do it the way you do doesn't mean you can be nasty to them! So kindly shove off, and take your half-assed apology with you." She turns to march away dramatically when something hits her in the back.

"Ouch!" She spins back to face Angie and looks at the ground to see what was just thrown at her. A carrot. "What the hell was that for?" Rose yells.

"Want to see something?" Angie asks calmly.

"Not if you're going to throw things at me!"

"You'll like it," says Angie. "Promise."

Rose is about to throw the carrot back in her face when she remembers what Angie said before. _"When my mum died, I cried my eyes out."_ Something in her stands down and she finds herself following Angie.

The girl leads her back to the Dinami and they wind through buildings until they leave the richer part and enter what Rose supposes is the slums. The houses with cushions and patios are replaced by one- or two-room shacks.

Past the slums is a meadow. It's been fenced off, which at first Rose doesn't understand. Then she hears a mooing, and turns to see a herd of cows.

"Cows?" she says.

"Livestock," says Angie. "They make their own food here, obviously. Clothes, too. They've got cows, pigs, goats, sheep, chickens, and . . ." She leads Rose around a stack of cages and opens her arms, presenting ". . . rabbits!"

They're cute. Undeniably cute, with twitching noses and big eyes. There are brown ones, white ones, spotted ones, big ones, little ones. They hop in their small, fenced-off section of the meadow, mingling and resting.

Artie sits in the cage. One's on his lap and another's in his hands. "I've named them," he announces. "Colonel Sanderson and Mike McGregors."

"Those names are stupid," replies Angie. "They're already called Fluffers and Patricia."

"Those names are stupid!" Artie complains.

"Here." Angie reaches down and scoops up a brown spotted rabbit. She holds it out to Rose.

"Oh. Um - okay." Rose doesn't know how to hold a rabbit, so she puts both her hands out flat. Angie rolls her eyes and shows her how to cup the rabbit in her hands, before handing her the rabbit.

It's really more of a bunny, judging by the size. It sniffs Rose's fingers curiously but besides that, it seems content to rest in her hands.

"That's Clara's favorite," says Angie. "Her name's Souffle. Clara has some weird thing about souffles, I don't know why."

"She's cute," says Rose. "So why do you have rabbits here? How do they help?"

"That's the point, doofus," Angie says, but Rose doesn't get offended like she would before. She's realized that insults are sort of Angie's default mode. "They don't help with anything, they're just cute and fluffy." She sighs and sits down next to her brother to pick up the rabbit who is either Colonel Sanderson or Fluffers. "The Dinami don't have much, do they? A few cars, three planes, a dozen scientists. They've got to grow their own food and make their own clothes and build their own equipment, and they section some of it off to raise bunnies."

Rose sits down across from them, stroking Souffle lightly on the head. "So . . . what do you think that means?" she asks Angie.

"I dunno," says Angie. "It probably doesn't mean anything. I'll tell you what, though. I bet the Division isn't spending any of its time with rabbits."

Rose can't help but agree.


	11. Chapter 11

Come supper time, Rose is called by Amy and ushered into a dining hall, which is just a marble room in one of the central buildings that has enough room for everyone to be there. A few cooks who bring the food out in pots and serve it. It's tomato soup with bread and apple slices, and it really isn't half bad. People bring their own cushions to sit on and their own cups and bowls. Some have spoons to eat with, some just sip their directly from the cup.

The Doctor's already seated and drinking some soup from one of his borrowed mugs. He's sitting next to Donna, and they're having a very loud and very passionate discussion - over what, Rose can't tell.

She hasn't got a soup cup, and she's not incredibly hungry anyway, so she considers leaving. Before she can, Martha taps her on the shoulder. "Amy's giving out cups if you haven't got one," she says. "Also, Mr. Saxon wants to talk to you."

Rose looks at her nervously. "What about?"

"It's nothing major," Martha reassures her. "It's just about where we fit in at the Division. We've all got to pull our weight now. He's already spoken to Clara and Donna and I."

"What did he say?"

"Well, Clara's working in computer and experimental sciences, no surprise there," she replies. "Donna said she's good with numbers, so she's going to be keeping records and helping with building stuff. And I," Martha says proudly, "I'm going to be a tactician."

"Really? Cool!" says Rose, who doesn't actually know too much about tactics and strategies, but suspects Martha would be good at it.

Martha shrugs humbly, but she can't hide her smile. "I always wanted to do it for the Division, planning strategies and stuff, but they assigned me to organization for the Division. It was a bit of a let down, honestly, especially since a lot of the tacticians they did choose were too busy trying to seem clever to actually get stuff done."

"I'm happy for you," Rose says, and she means it.

"Thanks," Martha replies. She glances over at Donna and the Doctor and says, "Maybe we ought to go over there and settle this."

Rose is about to say that they can take care of those arguments and Donna proclaims at a booming volume, "It can't be a _tiger_ , they're not native to Africa, you dope!" The Doctor opens his mouth for what will no doubt be a cutting retort, and Rose thinks Martha might have a point.

"What's the argument?" she says as she sits down.

"It's over, is what it is," Donna announces, looking smug.

"I was just telling Rose about our assignments," says Martha, scooting over so Rose can also share her pillow with her. Rose sits down gratefully. "What do you think you're gonna get?"

"Dunno," says Rose. "Probably something simple." She glances at the Doctor. "What did you get?"

"Nothing, yet. Mr. Saxon needs to talk to me, too," he replies.

Rose has a sudden idea. "You should come with me," she says. She checks over her shoulder, lowers her voice, and says, "I don't really want to be alone with him."

"Not a fan of Mr. Saxon?" Donna asks.

"I don't dislike him, he just makes me a bit uncomfortable," Rose says honestly.

"How come?" Donna asks.

"I dunno, he seems nice, but he's also a bit . . . plastic."

Donna nods. "I know what you mean. I lived next door to this guy once, Henry, who was always saying good morning and making me coffee so I didn't have to pick some up at the store and he was really lovely. And one time, I got my own coffeemaker and made my own coffee, and he came out with his cup just like any other day to give me some, and I said it was all right, I already had some, and he got angry. Like properly pissed. It was like he needed to control everything in his little corner of the world and I made coffee and it just threw everything off for him. And he got really mad at me! So I told him, I said you can take that coffee and shove it up your -"

"Hey, guys," says Clara. Artie, Angie and Mickey are with her. She frowns at Donna, looking confused. "Uh . . . what are you talking about?"

"Henry," growls Donna.

"We were telling Rose about our assignments," Martha supplies.

"Oh, right!" Clara puts her cushions down and takes a seat. Artie and Angie follow her, and Mickey hovers awkwardly for a second, refusing to make eye contact, before joining them. "You'll probably be bunking with me, Rose," she says. "Donna and Martha are already sharing."

"We're sharing rooms?" Rose asks.

"Of course," says Martha. "There's not a lot to go around here. Mr. Saxon said it might have to be three to a room later." She looks at the Doctor. "I imagine you'll be sharing with Mickey, as you're the only two men not assigned yet."

"Brilliant!" says the Doctor. Mickey looks significantly less happy about this turn of events.

"Where've you been assigned, Mickey?" Rose says, hoping to include him in the discussion. But he just shrugs and mutters, "Don't know yet" and looks down at his food. He still seems antsy around her, and she really doesn't know why. Sure, they had a bit of an awkward breakup, and losing Jackie couldn't be easy for him either, but they'd been friends since before she can remember. She makes a mental note to talk to him later.

"I got my assignment," Angie interrupts. "I'm working with livestock." She looks proud of herself. "So's Archie," she adds, gesturing to him.

"You two, working? You're children," says Rose.

"Doesn't mean we can't help," Angie says irritably. "In case you haven't noticed, we're a bit low on people here."

Rose looks around. There's a fair amount of people around, over a hundred, but probably less than two hundred. She thinks of the Division, of their tall buildings and thousands of employees and wealth and resources, compared to less than two hundred people with a few cars and three aircrafts who raise their own livestock. Suddenly, the idea that they could ever stand up to the Division seems laughable.

She doesn't share her fears with everyone else. She's sure they can see it, too, judging by the silence that falls over the group.

As soon as their meals are finished, Mickey makes his escape, getting to his feet and shoving his hands in his pockets and marching away. Rose has to jog over to him.

"Hey," she says, catching his arm as he gets outside to the dirt road. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he says. He still won't meet her eye.

"Well, clearly it's something," she replies. "Spit it out."

"Fine." He turns to her. "I'd just finished my job for the day and I was going over to see Jackie. I was chaining up my bike outside when these black cars came, three of them in a row, and they all stopped outside of your apartment building. And these soldiers got out, with these huge guns and these black uniforms. And as soon as I saw them I hid behind a dumpster, and I watched them go into the apartment and come out a few minutes later. Then they left but I kept hiding anyway, because I thought they'd come back, and then that - that man," he spits the word out, "appears in a blue police box and without saying a word grabs my arm and pulls me inside. And it's enormous on the inside, impossibly big, and you were sitting on these stairs with this blank look in your eyes, and I was calling your name. I kept shaking you and saying your name over and over and you didn't respond, and meanwhile the man's fiddling with all these controls and yelling about how we have to get out of here right now and Jackie's dead and the Division's after us and he's not making any sense, and then he opens the doors and we're in bloody Ancient Rome!"

"But they explained it to you, didn't they?"

"Of course they did, eventually, but you weren't talking and Jackie was dead and I - I had friends, Rose! I had people I would've liked to say goodbye to! I just got plucked up and pulled out of my old life and thrown here!"

"I'm sorry," says Rose. "Mickey, I'm so sorry. I never meant for any of this -"

"See, that's the thing, Rose, it's not about what you meant," Mickey says. "What matters is what happened. My life is ruined, because of you."

That's a gross oversimplification of events, but it's probably also true, Rose thinks. She got him involved in all of this. She didn't even think about him when she wrote his name down.

"Would they have killed me?" Mickey says, quieter. "Would they have killed me like they did to Jackie?"

Tears prick the corners of Rose's eyes, but she manages, "I don't know. I thought they might."

"Why?" he says, and he's not angry anymore. "I don't see why they'd bother, seeing how little I mean to you."

"You can't believe that," says Rose fiercely.

"You dumped me, you left me behind -"

"No, you _can't_ believe that!" Rose says desperately. "They asked me to write down the names of people I wanted to save, and I wrote down two names! Just two! One of them was my mum, and the other was you. I've already lost her, don’t make me lose you!" She takes a step in closer, needing him to understand. "I've known you since we were kids, Mickey, and you are my friend."

Mickey looks down at his shoes, and back up at the sky, and lets a frustrated breath out. "See, this is the problem, Rose! Whenever I'm by myself and thinking about you, it always seems so clear what needs to happen. You go away, and I think about us, and our relationship, and everything, and I see that I'm clingy and you're needy and we're not working together. And it makes sense. And then - then you come back, and you make everything confused again. When I'm alone, I think, 'She doesn't care about me and she doesn't need me.' And then you say stuff like that, and you mess me up, Rose. I know you don't mean to, but you do. I know you care about me, but I - I can't be around you right now, all right?"

Rose bites the inside of her lip to keep from crying. "All right," she says.

Mickey nods, one short nod, and turns on his heel to walk away.

Rose just feels tired. She feels defeated, like she's fought for a very long time and doesn't want to anymore. When she was with the Doctor, just the two of them, it was a mad sort of adventure, free and exciting and interesting. It was only when that world came crashing in to the real world that she began to see the consequences.

And speak of the Devil. "Rose!"

She watches the Doctor jog towards her, hair plastered to the side of his head by the wind, and thinks that he might have one of the most expressive faces she's ever seen. She never really has to guess at what he's thinking or feeling, which is nice, and a welcome change.

"Yeah?" she asks when he's beside her.

"Saxon wants to see us," he says. "Well, more accurately you, but you said you wanted us to go in together, right?"

"Right," she says, taking a shaky breathe.

He studies her face closely. "Is it bad again?"

"It will be. I've put it under the freak out later category," she says. She manages a small smile and continues, "Mickey just broke up with me. Again. Didn't even know that was possible, considering we weren't even together, but I guess it is, because he won't talk to me and he doesn't want to be around me and he doesn't even want to look at me -"

Her voice grows higher as she goes on and the Doctor takes her firmly by the shoulders and says, "Rose. Calm down."

"Right." She takes deep breathes, in and out, in and out. "I forget that . . ." There was an ending to that sentence, but gosh, his eyes really are nice, aren't they? At first they just seemed plain and brown, but now . . . She thinks she could probably get lost in that forest of color, and oh, yeah, she needs to finish that thought, doesn't she? ". . . sometimes. Hey want to live together?"

That might have been a bit sudden, judging by the way he jerks back. "What?"

"That sounded strange. I didn’t mean it that way," says Rose. "I meant, I kind of don't want to be around people right now, because I don't feel completely in control of my emotions."

"People . . . except me?"

"Right, except you. So I just thought maybe, if you didn't . . ." She's backtracking as soon as she can. "I mean you don't have to, obviously, it was just a thought . . ."

"No, no, I appreciate the thought!" he says quickly. "It's just that . . . um." He scratches the back of his head. "I don't think that would be . . . completely appropriate, due to, um . . ."

"Are you blushing?" she interrupts.

"What? No. No! Definitely not," he says.

"Yes you are," she says, and she can't help the smile that falls over her face. "Right there!" She points to his cheeks. "Your face is a different color."

"I'm cold. I'm not _blushing_." He sounds affronted.

"I think you are, though!" she says. "I think you're properly embarrassed right now! And I think I know why, too!"

"All right, that's enough," he says irritably. "You want to see Saxon or not?"

"Sure, sure, dodging the subject," she teases as she falls in step next to him. "So where's Saxon, then?"

"Same building, I think," says the Doctor.

"Same building as before? What, does he live there?" Rose asks.

"I bet he does," says the Doctor quietly. "I bet he has a sleeping bag rolled up under his desk and every night he changes out of his suit and tie into pajamas that are styled like a suit and tie, only comfy."

"And I bet he has bunny slippers," says Rose, "and he warms his toes in them and he has a plush rabbit he gets all snuggled up with."

"And don't forget his wife," the Doctor adds. "I'll bet she sings him to sleep every night."

"What does she sing him, Doctor?"

"A mash up of Clare de Lune and 'Don't Stop Believing'," he replies, and Rose doubles over laughing at the imagery.

By the time they reach Saxon's office, they're still giggling. Saxon takes them in with a tight-lipped smile. His eyes fall on Rose. "Miss Tyler," he says. "I'm glad to see that you're taking your mother's death so well."

And just like that, it all comes crashing back. She'd been able to forget, for a few moments, with the Doctor, but it hits her all over again and her smile disappears almost immediately. She can actually feel the color draining out of her face.

The Doctor shifts closer to her, drawing Saxon's gaze to him. Saxon frowns. "I was hoping to speak to you each privately."

"We'd rather just do it together," says the Doctor in a faux cheery tone. "Get it over with, you know? So! What's our assignments?"

"Have a seat," says Saxon, and demonstrates by taking a seat himself. Rose and the Doctor join him.

"Doctor, you'll be bunking with Mickey Smith in house 7, room 3. Rose, you'll be bunking with Clara Oswald in house 4, room 9. That is, unless you have any requests," he says, pointedly looking between them.

She will not go red. "No, we don't," she says firmly.

"All right. As for assignments, Rose," he turns to her "we were hoping you could assist Clara in experimental sciences."

"Wow," says Rose. She assumed she'd be manual labor. "Wow, that's really . . . thank you."

He accepts with an incline of his head, and turns to the Doctor. "As for you, Doctor," he says, "we were hoping you could lead a team of manufacturers."

"Manufacturers." The Doctor tests the word out in his mouth, and from what Rose can tell, she doesn't like it. "Weapons, you mean."

"Among other things."

"No," says the Doctor firmly.

"Then how," Saxon says, drawing out the word, "do you expect to pull your weight around here, Doctor? You may have noticed, but we're exceptionally low on numbers, and we've got a group of very powerful people with many resources who want us dead. And they've succeeded in killing off a great number of valued citizens here. We don't even have two hundred people left, and we're trying to stand up to what used to be several different countries. We need some sort of advantage, and now. You are that advantage."

"I won't do it," says the Doctor.

"Then we'll be slaughtered," Saxon replies flatly. "And if they don't outright kill you, they'll just make you their slave again."

"And then at least there won't be any confusion," the Doctor says, "over whether I'm a slave or not." He seems calm, but Rose can see his foot tapping under the table, fast and nervous. "I'll do something else, Saxon. I'll help in some other way."

"What other way?"

"What do you need help in?"

"We need weapons," says Saxon.

"I already told you, no."

They stare at each other, and Saxon says, "Doctor, if we don't get weapons, we'll have to resort to something else. Something worse."

"Oh, you mean a worse way of killing people?"

"Spare me your morals," Saxon spits. "It's very easy to preach pacifism when you're not the one who's being hurt."

"You don't think I've suffered?" the Doctor snaps.

"I think you don't have nearly as much on the line as the rest of us."

"You're wrong."

They do that thing where they stare at each other again. Sizing each other up. _Blimey, you can smell the testosterone,_ Rose thought. Out loud, she says, "You said there was another way, didn't you? What other way?"

"None yet," says Saxon. "We're looking, but as you can imagine, we don't have a lot of options."

"I'm sorry," says the Doctor. "Truly, I am. But I will not ever make a weapon again. I made that promise and I'll keep it until the day I die. Never again."

Saxon looks him over and sighs. "All right."

Both the Doctor's and Rose's eyebrows shoot up. "What, really?" Rose asks. "Is that it?"

"I'm not going to force you," Saxon says, sounding a bit offended. "We're not the Division. We want to be better than them. I disagree with your choice, Doctor, and I'd like it if you reconsidered. But ultimately, the Dinami stands for what the Division does not - free will, and choice. I won't deny you that."

The Doctor looks a bit surprised, but just says, "Thank you."

"You'll be assigned to records with Miss Noble. Help us go through all of the files we smuggled and interpret them. Like I said, we need an advantage." Saxon gets to his feet, buttons his suit jacket, and offers his hand to them. "Thank you for your time."

They both shake his hand and say no problem and thank you as well and they're out. They wait until they're down the street and out of view of the building before turning to each other.

"Well that was . . . unexpected," says Rose. "I expected him to get a bit nasty."

"So did I." The Doctor shoves his hands in his pockets. After a moment, he adds, "I'm glad he didn't, though."

"Yeah, me too." Rose plays with her nails. "All right, we'd better move in to our rooms. Is my stuff still in the TARDIS?"

The Doctor confirms with a nod. Rose considers something.

"Does Saxon know you've got the TARDIS?" she asks.

"He knows I've got a ship."

"Does he know your 'ship' happens to run on time energy and can teleport itself to anywhere on the planet?"

"Eh, no, he doesn't know that bit."

Rose laughs, and shakes her head. "You know, that could be considered an 'advantage'. We could literally just zap right in to Division headquarters."

"First of all," says the Doctor, "they're running a signal to interfere with the time energy."

“You got past it last time.”

"The signal's fairly easy to get around. The only problem is as soon as we do, the Division knows, so they know we're coming. And secondly," he continues, "consider how powerful the TARDIS is. Consider how dangerous that could be in the wrong hands."

"You think Saxon's the 'wrong hands'?"

"I think Saxon's put himself in charge of a renegade group of people with not much of a fighting chance," says the Doctor. "That breeds desperation. Desperation breeds inhumanity and corruptness."

"So you don't trust him."

"I don't trust what he might become," says the Doctor. "And it doesn't matter if I trust him or not. I like playing my cards close to my chest."

"But doesn't Amy know?" Rose asks. "Didn't she see it appear?"

"No, she didn't. She heard a noise and walked in to find it. She thinks we flew there."

"She thinks we flew into a house?"

"The house is a landing pad. It has a retractable roof," says the Doctor. "I didn't just land in a random house."

"Oh." It seems like that would be obvious, but in all fairness, it’s been a hectic few days. "Right."

They go to get their belongings from the TARDIS, which doesn't take very long considering how little they brought with them. Rose runs her finger down the side of the TARDIS. The paint has begun peeling. She wonders if they've got any paint in the Dinami. She doubts it, but if they did, she'd love to give the ship a bit of a makeover.

Room 9 in house 4 is small with two beds, two dressers and one table crammed into it. There's a bathroom at the end of the hall which Rose suspects she'll have to share with everyone in the building. There are two blankets and one pillow on each bed, and there’s little leg space. Rose knows the Dinami's better, but she can't help but miss the long hallways of the Division, and the open space in her apartment. It seemed small at the time, and certainly compared to some of the larger houses she saw, but it was comfortable. She knew she'd have food and a warm place to stay when she came home.

Clara's not in their room when Rose goes in, and she doesn't come back until later at night, so Rose has enough time to change into pajamas and turn off the light and pretend to be asleep. She listens to Clara getting into bed and shifting in the place next to her. She waits until Clara's breathing has evened out before she lets herself start crying. She knows that when she starts, she won't be able to stop.

It's dark and quiet in the little room, the only sound Rose's sobs, muffled when she presses her face into her solitary pillow. Still, she can't help but wonder if anyone else can hear her.


	12. Chapter 12

The morning is far, far too bright. And Clara wakes up far, far too early.

"We've got our first day on the job!" she says excitedly as she throws open the curtains on the windows, letting way too much light in. How can anyone, Rose wonders, be up, much less happy, at this hour? "I just can't wait."

Clara is the girl in high school who got perfect grades, perfect attendance, perfect hair, perfect clothes, and overachieved in every area of their life. Rose doesn't believe in disliking people simply because they had done more than you had. She considers it petty. She's starting to rethink that.

They serve breakfast, lunch and supper in the Main Hall (as they called the large room they ate in). However, each house receives a certain number of items that they could use to make food. Among the items are eggs, milk, butter, two loaves of bread, salt, sugar, flour, cheese, potatoes, carrots, peas, onions, apples, oranges, grapes, and a slab of pork, lamb, chicken or beef. The meat is limited, and so houses can only choose one slab at a time, and have to make a collective decision. Rose's house chose chicken. Personally, she would have chosen pork.

Despite them serving a standard breakfast of porridge, by the time Rose has dressed, brushed her hair and made herself vaguely presentable, Clara has already made a breakfast consisting of scrambled eggs with basil (where she got the basil, Rose doesn't know). She's also wearing a pink floral skirt, a black sweater, tights, high heels, and gold earrings. Her makeup is perfect and her hair is smooth as it falls down her back. Rose narrows her sleepy morning eyes. Clearly Clara isn't completely human and is not to be trusted.

"Good morning!" Clara says again, handing Rose a full plate of eggs and some orange juice. She must have squeezed the oranges by hand. Rose reevaluates her earlier conclusion. Clara is definitely an angel.

"You too," Rose says, but through her bleariness, it comes out, "Yutuh." She clears her throat and has a seat outside. Ancient Romans didn't believe in indoor kitchens, apparently.

"Are you nervous?" Clara asks.

Rose shrugs. Truth is, she's not very nervous. She'd barely been able to sleep the day before she met the Doctor. But honestly, after that job, experimental sciences didn't sound too daunting.

They're meeting in Headquarters, on the first floor. Rose doesn't think she'll ever understand what the flashing monitors mean. She doesn't know where to go, but Clara seems to, so Rose follows her lead. They walk past many of the monitors and into a back room.

The room's been cleared and has no windows and only one entrance, a doorway with a curtain over it. There's what looks like a dentist's table on one side of the room, and a few counters with many drawers on them. There's a cupboard which Clara goes to. She pulls out a white lab jacket and some safety goggles and motions for Rose to do the same. She also ties back her hair. Rose follows her lead.

"So, what exactly are we doing here?" Rose asks.

"Experimental sciences," Clara says. "We'll be given subjects to work and experiment with. I imagine it will have something to with weapons or air ships." She glances at Rose. "He told me, when I met with him, that he'd come by and give us our subjects. Didn't he say that to you?"

"He was a bit . . . focused on the Doctor," Rose says.

"I imagine so," Clara retorts.

"What do you mean?"

"Well," Clara explains with a shrug, "Saxon's clearly very smart, yeah? And so's the Doctor. I imagine that before the Doctor showed up, Saxon was the smartest person here, and that's including Professor Yana."

"So you think Saxon's threatened by the Doctor?"

"I think he's fascinated by him," says Clara. "And maybe just a teensy bit threatened. He strikes me as someone who, for whatever reason, is used to having things his way."

There's a small cough from the doorway and Clara and Rose spin around simultaneously to see Saxon standing there. Rose goes pink but Clara goes _crimson_ and can't even meet Saxon’s eye.

However, Saxon doesn't seem to have heard them, or maybe he doesn't care. He's carrying a briefcase, and he walks over and sets it down on the table. He then goes over to the cupboard, slips on a white lab jacket and some glasses, and opens the briefcase for them.

Inside is a long glass tube with several silver lines on the inside. Besides the silver lines, the tube seems to be completely empty. Each silver line has a cord on the opposite side of the glass of the tube. Each cord runs away from the glass and is plugged in to what appears to be some sort of touchscreen tablet. Rose has never actually seen a touchscreen tablet before, as they're only used for professional use, and for high-up professions at that. She's seen them depicted on TV, but they looked different. This is - well, frankly boring. No flashing lights or sleek design. It just looks like a laptop without buttons.

"What is it?" she asks, seeing as Clara's spending most of her time examining her shoes.

"This," Saxon says, running his fingers along the tube, "is a vial of time energy. It's what you'll be working with."

Clara actually gasps, her previous embarrassment forgotten. "Time energy? But - how is it contained?" she whispers.

"This is my own design." Saxon motions to the tiny silver lines. "Are you familiar with Rees's model?"

Clara says "no" at the same time Rose says "yes". Both Clara and Saxon look at her with surprise.

"By all means, Miss Tyler," says Saxon.

"Um - I don't know the specifics," Rose says, "but wasn't it a model for conducting time energy - built off the human brain?"

"Precisely," Saxon says. "Rees theorized that humans could not build any sort of transmitter for time energy better than the natural universe had already provided, seeing as literally everything in the natural universe already conducts time energy, at least as far as mankind knows. So, he built a model of the human brain and began to conduct time energy after that. This model led to experiments on the human brain using time energy and, as you know, Miss Tyler, to the Blaidd Drwg project."

Clara seems to know what that is, as she suits Rose a pitying look which Rose studiously ignores.

"Those experiments were dangerous," Saxon says, "and they led to an unfortunate number of deaths. And for no reason, as the experiments were completely unsuccessful. So using a real brain would be foolish. However, I still believe that the person who manages to harness the energy of time will become victorious in any pursuit they ever wish to achieve. The problem is harnessing it." He taps the vial. "That's where this comes in.

"One of the reasons the human brain works so well with time energy is the neurotransmitters. They're set up in the brain to process natural chemicals - dopamine, serotonin, et cetera. But they also are very good at processing time energy. Do you know how many neurotransmitters are in the human brain?"

"They never found out," Clara says. "There were scientists researching it, a long time ago, but it shut down because of the war. But they believed it was over a hundred."

"Indeed," says Saxon. "'Over a hundred' was the common estimate." He motions to a tiny silver line. "There are two thousand neurotransmitters in every silver line you see, and ten silver lines. They're built as replicas of the neurotransmitters in human's brains. That's how we're keeping the time energy contained - it's going through all of the neurotransmitters."

"Oh my God," Clara says in a hushed voice.

"You mean you actually did it?" Rose asks. "You can actually use time energy?"

"Not quite," says Saxon. "Come look at this." He touches the tablet and it hums to life. He enters a pass code, too quickly for Clara and Rose to see, and pulls up a black screen. On the screen there seems to be a graph. There's a stream of particles along the graph, rising and falling. As Rose watches, Saxon minimizes the graph and it becomes smaller, shoved to the side. Now there are ten graphs on the screen, each with a stream of particles going along it.

Clara seems to understand, judging by the small "Oh!" sound she makes. So, Rose puts her pride to the side, and says, "Sorry, but I don't know what that means."

"Each graph represents a clump of neurotransmitters," says Clara. "One of the lines. And the particles you see going across them is time energy - how much is there. There's always a bit there, but you’ll notice sometimes it spikes, only to go down again. See?"

"Yeah. So?"

"Look at the pattern of the increases in time energy," says Clara. "Look how they're moving."

"They're going around in a circle," says Rose. "Like the time energy is traveling between the neurotransmitters."

"That's exactly what's happening," says Saxon. "The neurotransmitters process the time energy and send it off to the next transmitter. They're doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing, and it's keeping the time energy contained. The problem is, we need to manipulate the time energy - make it do what we want. And that is why I leave it with you." He shuts his briefcase.

"Wait a minute," says Rose. "Scientists have been trying to manipulate time energy for years and years, and you want us to figure it out right now?"

"I've given you a bit of a head start. Most of those scientists didn't have a tube of time energy to work with. Most of them couldn't even figure out how to contain it."

"Well if you did, why wouldn't you work on it?" asks Rose.

Saxon sighs. "Rose, if this worked, it would fix all of our problems," he says. "But as you say, scientists have been trying since before the war. And they've been failing. If it worked, that would be wonderful, but I can't spend all my time on it. I'm going to try to lead with the idea that it won't work, and then, if it does, it will be a welcome surprise."

"So it's a bit of a pipe dream?" Rose asks.

"A bit," Saxon agrees.

"All right," Rose says, turning back to the lab.

"And Rose?"

Rose turns back to him. "Yes?"

"I understand you have a . . . close relationship with some of the people here," he says. "However, I'd prefer to keep things that happen here confidential. Clear?"

Rose gives a short nod. "Crystal."

The next few hours tick by sluggishly. Clara insists that the first thing they need to do is develop equations for the time energy judging from the charts. However, the time energy doesn't seem to yield itself easily to mathematics, and Clara winds up frustrated while Rose, who can't seem to do the calculations with her, ends up bored. When they break for lunch Rose excuses herself quickly. Not that she doesn't like Clara, but having spent a few hours listening to her saying "That doesn't make sense! That's not _possible_!" over and over makes her eager to spend some quality time apart.

She finds the Doctor and pulls him aside. Instinct has her bring him outside, though she doubts Saxon would waste the limited materials or energy they have on installing security cameras or microphones. Still, she lowers her voice and says, "Saxon has us working on time energy."

That gets his attention, and he pauses with a sandwich half-chewed in his mouth. "Time energy? Are you serious? But how did you contain it?"

"Neurotransmitters," she begins, and that's all it takes before he slaps his hand to his forehead and says, "Of course! That's _brilliant _!"__

__"Yeah, well," Rose says, "we're supposed to be figuring out how to use it."_ _

__"You and every other science of the century," the Doctor agrees._ _

__"I wasn't supposed to tell you. Saxon told me to keep a secret." Rose pauses and laughs. "Like that was ever gonna happen. More of a pipe dream than giving me a tube of time energy to work on."_ _

__"So, what are you going to do?" the Doctor says._ _

__"I dunno," Rose says. "Don't really know why he put me on this, considering my nonexistent background in the subject." She looks up at him. "How was sorting through the records?"_ _

__"Dull," he replies._ _

__"Dull? With Donna?"_ _

__"Yeah, even she couldn't make spending two hours reading about construction for Division buildings interesting," he sighs. "We had to go over so many blueprints that just looking at a structure hurts."_ _

__Rose considers this, and then grabs the front of his collar and goes up on her tiptoes to kiss him lightly on the mouth. When she pulls away, his eyes are wide._ _

__"What was that for?"_ _

__"I like you," says Rose._ _

__"Oh. Right."_ _

__"I was feeling a rush of affection," she says, "and I acted in the moment."_ _

__"Well. Very . . . spontaneous."_ _

__Rose rolls her eyes. "If you don't want me to kiss you, you could just say so."_ _

__"No, that's not it!" he replies so quickly that it draws a laugh out._ _

__"Then why didn't you kiss me back?" she asks._ _

__"Uh . . ." His hand goes to the back of his head, like it does when he's nervous. "I mean, it was very . . . fast."_ _

__"Oh, in that case . . ." says Rose, and this time she pulls him into her. Their lips meet and her both her hands stay firmly locked on his collar as she deepens the kiss, moving her lips softly against his. She's gentle, and at first he doesn't respond much, but he relaxes into it, his hands going from splaying out awkwardly to resting on her hips, their lips moving in sync. She wraps her arms around his shoulders to pull herself closer and pushes his lips open, working into his mouth._ _

__Unfortunately, breathing is necessary to both their biologies, so they break away after a minute._ _

__"I take it back," Rose says, a little out of breath._ _

__"Take what back?" he asks._ _

__"I dunno," she giggles. "Want to do that again?"_ _

__"I think I need a minute to recover."_ _

__"Hmm, glad my kissing skills rendered you speechless," she teases, straightening her hoodie and fiddling with her hair._ _

__She's proven correct when his only comeback is an indistinct mutter. He straightens up, his tie askew and his collar rumpled. Rose's fingers immediately go to straightening and smoothing it out._ _

__"I should talk about blueprints more," he says after a moment of silence, and Rose begins laughing again._ _

__"Yeah, blueprints, that's what did it," Rose says. "What can I say, the internal structures of buildings really gets me going."_ _

__He giggles too. "Then why?"_ _

__"Like I said," she says. "I like you." She fiddles with her hair. "It's just . . . when I'm with you, it's okay, all of it. It hasn't been easy, you know, with . . . with my mum, and stuff, and it's getting harder to be around people, to even talk to them. But when I'm with you . . . I'm okay. It's not like it goes away - it's like stitching up a wound, or at least beginning to. You help . . . level me out, I guess, more than anyone has before. I feel safe with you." She looks at him, all rumpled hair and pinstripe suit, and smiles. "Plus, you're smart and you're funny and you know what to say to me and you always manage to surprise me but you're still familiar and you're honestly the dorkiest person I've ever met."_ _

__"Oh, please, Mickey Smith is the dorkiest person you've ever met," the Doctor says dismissively._ _

__"Mickey Smith doesn't chase after sentient Mars Rovers," says Rose. "Mickey Smith doesn't build sentient Mars Rovers in the first place."_ _

__"I don't think Mickey Smith knows what a sentient Mars Rover is."_ _

__"That's mean!"_ _

__"Sorry, Mickey."_ _

__They fall into a sort of comfortable silence, walking side-by-side, until they're interrupted by a familiar Scottish voice. "Oi! Rose! Can I talk to you?"_ _

__"Amy? What's she want?" Rose mutters to the Doctor, who simply shrugs._ _

__"Why don't you find out. We'll meet up later, okay?"_ _

__She nods and he walks away, leaving her alone as Amy jogs to catch up to her._ _

__"We need to talk," Amy says immediately, and Rose tries to suppress a groan, because really, nothing good ever starts with the words We need to talk. "It's not going to be pleasant," Amy adds, like she can read her mind._ _

__"Okay, just tell me," says Rose._ _

__"Your mum, when you found her," Amy says, "there was an eye patch, wasn't there?"_ _

__Rose really, really does not want to talk about this, especially to Amy, who seems nice, but they don't know each other well. "Yeah," she says shortly._ _

__"That means it was Kovarian," says Amy, and there's a fire in her eyes._ _

__"Maybe," Rose says hesitantly._ _

__"Who else could it be?"_ _

__"Why does it matter?" Rose shoots back._ _

__Amy considers her, and then says, "I need to show you something." She turns around and hikes her shirt up her back._ _

__"Uh, what are you doing?" Rose says, and then sees the mark on Amy's back. It looks a bit like a branding, and it's in the shape of a circle, with a pattern on the inside that looks vaguely like an hourglass. "What is that?"_ _

__"It's called the Seal of Rassilon," says Amy, turning back around._ _

__"And that is . . .?"_ _

__"Rassilon was a person," explains Amy. "A man. He's the one who perfected the freezing technology that allowed the Division to preserve the Doctor. There's a facility named after him in what used to be Aberdeen, Scotland. That's where the Doctor was kept when he was frozen. And that's where Rory and I were kept, too."_ _

__"You were frozen?"_ _

__Amy nods. "They mark every person who's frozen with that seal."_ _

__"But . . . how did you get out?"_ _

__"We were broken out six years ago, by the Dinami," says Amy._ _

__"I never heard about that," says Rose._ _

__"You wouldn't have. Most people don't even know there's anyone alive out here. The Division probably covered it up," Amy replies. "But Rory and I were frozen there."_ _

__"Why?"_ _

__"We were soldiers for the Division, before they were the Division. During the war," says Amy. "And then we betrayed them, and switched to the other side."_ _

__"Why?" Rose asks again. She feels a bit nosy, but hey, Amy's the one who came up to her and started talking._ _

__"Because I had a baby," Amy says. "I had a daughter named Melody."_ _

__It hits Rose like a freight train, and suddenly she remembers a brown-eyed girl staring up at her from a group of files. _Melody Samantha Pond. Deceased.__ _

__"She was taken for the Blaidd Drwg project," says Rose._ _

__"She started behaving funny, getting sicker, and we knew something was wrong, but no one would help us. We had to break in to their files to figure out what was going on, and as soon as we did, we took Melody and ran," says Amy. "And they caught us, and put a few bullets in Rory and I. They were sure we were done for, and they left us there. They took Melody with them."_ _

__"Amy, I'm so sorry," says Rose._ _

__"Kovarian was running the Blaidd Drwg project," Amy says. "She was young then, and it was her first big thing. She was a rookie, she wanted to prove herself, and she was certain the Blaidd Drwg project would do it. I remember lying on the ground, watching all this blood coming out of me, and I couldn't move. She stepped over me in her black high heels and walked over to the crib and took Melody. She left Rory and I there to die and walked off with our baby."_ _

__It's true that Rose doesn't know Amy well, but it doesn't stop her from taking a few steps forward to wrap her arms around Amy and hug her tightly. For a moment they stay still, and then she releases her and says, "Amy, I am so, so sorry that happened. But what has that got to do with me?"_ _

__Amy looks over her shoulder, and then says, "I'll tell you a secret, Rose. Rory and I, we're not here because we believe that the Division is horribly corrupt, or that the Dinami should take its place. Governments are bad everywhere, and as far as they go, the Division isn't one of the worse ones. We wouldn't be fighting them if it wasn't for Kovarian. We’'e here for one reason only - to kill her._ _

__"But the Division is strong. There's no guarantee Rory and I will live long enough to get to her. And you are the only person who hates her - who must want her dead - as much as we do."_ _

__"Amy, are you asking me to kill Kovarian for you?" Rose says._ _

__"If Rory and I can't," says Amy. "You don't have to do it yourself. Just . . . just make sure she dies, please."_ _

__"I . . ."_ _

__She wants to say that she won't do it. That killing is wrong, no matter what side it comes from. That Kovarian thought she was doing the right thing. That killing her would only be stooping to her level. But she stops._ _

__Those aren't her words, they're the Doctor's. He forgives. He, ironically, fights for peace. But Rose? Rose can only think about the dead children whose bodies were tossed like garbage into the sewer. She can only think about her mother's dead body, about Kovarian stepping over Amy and Rory to get to their child, who ended up dying before she turned four. Any human being should be able to tell that killing children is wrong. Kovarian doesn't deserve to live._ _

__So Rose cuts herself off, and says, "Okay, Amy, I'll do it. But do me a favor and don't go dying on me, all right?"_ _

__Amy smiles. "Thanks, Rose."_ _

__She begins to walk away, and Rose calls after her, "Amy!"_ _

__She turns. "What?"_ _

__"Why'd they freeze you, anyway?"_ _

__Amy shrugs. "Dunno. We never figured that part out."_ _

__And with that, she's gone, leaving Rose with a fragile promise and a dark spot on her conscience._ _


	13. Chapter 13

She meets up with the Doctor after another few hours of Clara struggling over equations (at one point she'd said, "Clara, it might just be impossible to get calculations on time energy, don't you think?" and was shushed for her troubles). They hadn't planned it, but Rose had seen the sunset over the mountains and thought it would look better up closer. So she’d hiked over to the spot under the tree she’d gone to when she was mourning Jackie, and she found him there.

"Sunset?" she asks, and he nods without turning around. She leans against the tree next to him and watches it. Maybe this would be a good time to kiss, but the moment is already so perfect and simple that she thinks doing anything more would ruin it. Instead, she slips her fingers in between his and feels the warmth of his hand in hers, the squeeze of his hand.

As the sun sets, it grows colder, and he moves closer to her, their shoulders pressing together. By the time it's actually sunk beneath the horizon, her head rests on his shoulder, their hands still tightly wound together.

"You make me happy," she says simply. That was it, really. She could make her speeches, to them, but that was all there was to it - the warmth she felt that had nothing to do with the sun and everything to do with the man standing next to her.

"You too," he says back.

It never takes a declaration of love, a dramatic, tear-stricken, emotional scene about their feelings. That is about finding simplicity in a chaotic universe. Because what else could a chaotic universe crave but something simple?


	14. Chapter 14

Seconds tick into minutes, minutes into hours, hours into days, days into weeks, and weeks into one month.

Somewhere, Rose thinks in frustration, somewhere in the universe there are supernovas and alien species and planets made of diamonds, and she is trapped on earth in the same room doing the same job. If this is growing up, she wants no part in it.

Clara tried for weeks to do calculations on the time energy, but after weeks of failing she was forced to admit that there simply wasn't a way to measure time energy, at least not with their equipment. So their job now borders on the "experimental" side - namely, doing stuff to the time energy and hoping it doesn't kill everyone.

So far, their only success has been moving it from its original tube to a larger glass sphere which hung between two levitation pads (courtesy of Professor Yana). This allows them to observe the flow of time energy from all possible angles, which still doesn't really help them too much.

One month passes, and for a renegade group of people trying to dismantle a tyrannic government, it's remarkably boring.

When she's not working, she spends her time with two people. One of them is the Doctor. There's not too many places they can go to be free of the Dinami, so the tree between the Dinami and the mountains becomes their default location. After mealtimes or work, they always head up to talk to each other. The Doctor tells her about some of the new records he's seen - military secrets, strategies, etc - and it all sounds fascinating, and she offers several times to switch jobs with him. Besides that, they talk about - well, anything, really. Their conversations can go from cat breeds to philosophy to giggling over the words "moon platoon" to having an existential crisis.

"Don't you think it's funny," Rose said a week after her conversation with Amy, "that I know what you'd do if you had to choose between destroying the human race to save the universe, but I don't know what your favorite color is?"

"That's hilarious!"

"You're a regular comedian, aren't you? You know I meant funny weird, not funny ha-ha."

"I don't know my favorite color, either," the Doctor said. "There isn't even anything that distinguishes colors. There's just one big spectrum, and we put labels on it. Who can actually measure, though, the exact wavelength which differentiates green from blue? It's impossible."

"Oh, get over yourself and choose a favorite color."

"Uh, probably dark blue."

"Right!" She smacked herself on the forehead. "I should have known! The TARDIS, the suit . . . it was all so obvious!"

"What's your favorite color?"

She thought about it for a minute, and then said, "Sunset."

Not technically a color, but he accepted it.

"I have a question for you," she said. "I've been meaning to ask you for awhile . . . do you know what Rassilon is?"

"Of course," he said. "How do you?"

"Amy told me about it," she replied. "Amy and Rory, they were frozen there too."

"Why?"

"Dunno," Rose said. "What, you didn’t know they were there?"

"No," he said. "They must have been thawed out before or after me, because I never knew." He pondered that for a minute, and said, "Do you think they have two hearts, too?"

"I dunno, I didn't ask." A thought occurred to her. "You've been taking your medication, right?"

"Eh, in a manner of speaking."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that obviously I can't get the actually medication required, so I take alternatives that Professor Yana brews up for me."

"What's with Yana, anyways? I keep hearing his name."

"You would. He's involved with practically everything. Saxon's right-hand man," said the Doctor. "A proper genius, too."

"Like, as smart as you?"

"Smarter, in some departments."

"Hold on, say that again?"

He glared at her. "There are people who are smarter than me, Rose Tyler. And people who are smart in different ways."

"Still, it's a right pain to get you to admit it."

He rolled his eyes. "Anyways, Yana's got his fingers in lots of different projects, but what he's especially good at is building engines out of practically nothing. Give him some string and some nails and he'll whip something up. Not literally, of course, no one could build an engine out of string and nails, but you get the drift."

"If he can do that, why do they even _need_ you?" Rose asked, and the Doctor was so insulted that he refused to speak to her for five minutes, much to her amusement.

The Doctor takes up a lot of her time, and the other person she spends it with is Martha.

It surprised Rose, at first, that Martha was her first choice to be friends with. But after working with Clara for hours on end, one tires of her company, and though Rose likes Donna quite a bit, Donna gets on better with the Doctor. Amy and Rory spend all their time with each other, and Rose always feels like she's intruding when she talks to them.

Martha is simply likeable. She has a steady sort of presence that none of the others have, an unshakeable sort of resolve paired with a quick-thinking mind and a sarcastic sense of humor to match. It's no wonder to Rose why Martha was chosen as a strategist - she's organized, efficient, and simply never runs out of ideas.

All of this makes Martha easy to get along with, and to be honest, spending time with her is better than spending time with Mickey, Jeff, Barb or any of her old friends, because, as terrible as it sounds, Martha is just capable of a higher level of thinking than they are. She's a student of philosophy and psychology as well as basic sciences and maths needed for her job, and her ideas for a new government once the Division is overrun are things that Rose's old friends wouldn't have been able to imagine.

"See, there was this philosopher a long time ago, John Locke," says Martha. "He was an English philosopher, but his ideas spread to lots of other places, too. One of those ideas, the most important one in my opinion, is that a government exists solely to serve its people. It shouldn't dictate their lives, it should help them. But see, the thing is, all of the governments formed back before the war did essentially the same thing the Division does now, just not as . . . obviously. They controlled people's lives, pointed them in certain directions. And it's not their fault, either, it's just the way they were set up. But it can be changed."

She introduces Rose to the idea of several branches of government which runs on checks and balances. "That way, no one person or group of people can have unlimited power," she explains. She also gets into political parties with Rose. "They dictate people's thinking so much by making it unnecessary for them to think," she says. "Some people will always want to think things through on their own, but some people will just choose to go along with it, and political parties helped them do just that. 'Don't bother thinking about these issues yourself, just vote this way!' Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to deny creation of political parties under a democratic system. But it might be possible to limit their involvement, or to actually force people to think things through on their own. See, I don't think that people back then were dumb or anything, they were just forced into a certain way of thinking and taught not to question it. I think that if people are given a real opportunity to question things, to decide their own beliefs, they'll make good decisions. We just have to give them that opportunity!"

Her eyes always become bright and excited when she talks about it, and at first Rose would just listen along and watch her face light up, but as they spent more time together she'd insert her own ideas in.

"I think there are a few things the Division did right," she says one day. "Like how everyone has a house, and a job. I think we should continue like that. No one should have to live on the streets . . . well, unless they want to," she adds. "But everyone should pitch in, you know?"

Martha nods. "Those are Communist ideals," she says. "Communism was a woefully optimistic political plans which ultimately ended in failure, but many of their ideas were sound. It was a few that were lacking which pulled them down."

"So what if we took some capitalist ideas, and some communist ideas, and some ideas from other places too, and mixed them together?" Rose asks. "Would we get a perfect government?"

"No such thing as a perfect government," Martha says. "Let's aim for a functional one."

"And maybe one that doesn't kill little kids."

"That's a pretty good strategy too."

Martha and the Doctor are the two people Rose spends most of her time with, but she spends breakfast, lunch and dinner with a set group of people: the Doctor, Donna, Clara, Martha, Mickey, Amy, Rory, and a chubby, friendly man named Craig Owens. And as time passes, she begins to think of the people more and more as her friends.

She's not supposed to spend time with Mickey anymore, but she keeps an eye on him, and what she sees both makes her happy and wrenches her stomach. Mickey, like her, seems to be enamored of Martha. He listens to her in much the way a religious man would listen to a sermon - as if her words are keeping his head above the water. Martha seems just as willing to share her ideas with him as she was with Rose, and he seems just as eager to add comments, which leads Rose to a new discovery - Mickey isn't stupid. She almost hates herself for being surprised.

She and Mickey never talked about politics or philosophy when they were together. They talked about - well, she can't even remember. What they did that day, what they thought of Barb's new hair, why Evan never shut up. But when she hears him telling Martha that Socialism was an abridged version of Communism and the closest the old world got to a decent government, she wishes she'd breached the subject with him. She just always assumed he'd never be interested.

When she tells the Doctor this, he nods. They're at their tree, sitting next to each other with their shoulders touching. "I've seen this before," he says in his I'm-about-to-provide-you-with-very-valuable-wisdom-so-listen-up voice.

"Please, bestow your wisdom upon me," Rose says.

"You just weren't right for each other."

"Really? I never would have guessed."

"No, I mean it. So many people don't understand. Just because it didn't work out with someone doesn't mean one of you is dumb, or mean, or otherwise irreparably flawed. It just means that for whatever reason, you didn't click."

Rose nods. "I'd like to be friends with him, though. I mean, he talks to Martha about that stuff, and I do too, so why can't we talk about it together?"

The Doctor considers this and says, "But Mickey doesn't want that, does he?"

"No, he doesn't," Rose sighs. "Did I really hurt him that badly?"

"I imagine it would hurt quite a bit, feeling like you were being replaced or left behind," says the Doctor.

"I never meant that."

"No, but that's how he felt. I think he just needs some space. It doesn't mean you'll never be friends again, it means you can't be right now. He's at an interesting place, and I think he needs to grow up a bit more on his own first."

"You know what's the most annoying thing about you?" Rose asks. "You think you're always right, and you almost always are."

"Annoying? I think that's one of my better qualities," he says.

"Nah. You have much better qualities."

"Like . . .?"

She laughs. "Look at you, fishing for compliments!"

"You're the one who brought it up."

"You know what I like about you."

They're silent for a moment, looking up at the leaves, and the Doctor says, "You know, in a week I'll be a hundred years old."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. April 18, 2007. That's my birthday."

"Yeah, but you spent over half that time frozen." She pauses and frowns. "April? Are we really in April now?"

"Yeah. It's April 10 today."

"That means it'll be my birthday soon, too. April 27," she says. "I'll be twenty." She bites her lip, deep in thought. The first nineteen years of her life had been so similar - living in the same apartment, going to school and spending time with roughly the same people. The most action of her entire life had taken place in the last months of nineteen, and she had no idea what twenty was going to bring.

"We should celebrate together," the Doctor says, pulling her out of her thoughts.

"Yeah." She grins at him. "That'd be fun. But I don't think we'll be eating any cake."

"Maybe not, but we can still have fun."

When Rose heads back into work after lunch the next day, Clara looks close to tears.

"Why did he give us this job?" she yells in frustration. "It's impossible! We could spend the rest of our lives working on this and we'd be no closer to being able to harness it than we were the day we started!" She slams down her goggles. "We could be so much useful somewhere else, but we're wasting time and resources here. I'm going to go to Saxon and tell him to shut this down and reassign us somewhere else."

"Are you sure?" Rose asks, startled. She knows she's been less than helpful, but she's never seen Clara this upset.

"Positive," says Clara resolutely. "There's just . . . We've tried, haven't we? We've really, honestly tried, but . . . there's just nothing to be done. And maybe it shouldn't be, either." She takes a seat and sighs. "I mean, think about it, Rose. Think about what we're really doing here - trying to manipulate the very energy that the universe runs on! Let's say it wins us the war - then what? What will we do with it next?" She shakes her head. 

"Destroy it," says Rose. Clara looks up sharply, surprised. "You're right, Clara, it's dangerous. If we find a way to use it, and it wins us the war, we destroy everything right afterwards. All the research, everything. And we can never tell anyone. The knowledge will die with us."

Clara bites her lip and nods. "Which would be a problem if it wasn't absolutely impossible to work with this stuff."

"Let's think." Rose sits down across from her. "They used a human brain before, right? Did they only use it for neurotransmitters, or for something else?"

"They didn't even know it would work for neurotransmitters," says Clara. "I think Rees just used it because he thought it would be a good conductor. I don't think he knew why."

"We should take a look at his research," says Rose. "See what else it was."

"Where are we going to get our hands on his research?" Clara asks.

"I know where to start."

* * * * *

The Doctor and Donna work in a different building than Rose and Clara. Rose has never seen where they work, but she's waited outside the room for him before, so she knows which one it is.

She's surprised, though, when he opens the door, to find that he and Donna are actually working in Professor Yana's bedroom.

"I thought it would be an office," says Rose. 

"They're a bit short on space," says the Doctor, moving aside to let her and Clara in. "What can I do for you?"

"We're looking for some sort of scientific document," says Rose. "A record of Rees's experiments with time energy and the human brain model? Do you have anything like that?"

"Sorry, but no," says Donna. "When I was smuggling documents out, I was more focused on building plans, weapons records, strategies, stuff that would be useful in a war. I didn't really go for the scientific stuff." She sounds a bit regretful.

"I've read about it, though," the Doctor says. "If you ask me what you need, I could try to remember it."

"We were just wondering what specifically about the brain worked," Clara interjects. "Was it only neurotransmitters, or was there another reason the human brain was particularly effective?"

"Rees never knew what about the human brain worked as such a good conductor," the Doctor explains. "But he theorized."

"And what was his theory?"

"Willpower," the Doctor says. Donna pauses and puts down her records to listen in. "Rees tried using animal brains, and models of the human brain, but as you two have found out, all that does is circulate the energy. His theory was that the time energy would have to circulate in a real brain, and that the human could control it through willpower."

"Which lead to Blaidd Drwg," says Rose. "They thought that a living child would be a perfect weapon."

"Exactly."

"Well, thank you," says Rose, and she and Clara say goodbye and make their exit.

"That was unhelpful," Clara sighs as they walk back. "I suppose I'll talk to Saxon."

"Clara," says Rose slowly, "you've read the Blaidd Drwg files, right?"

"Right."

"Why did the children die? What specifically happened?"

"Results varied, but what generally happened was the time energy proved too much for their brains. It fried the neurotransmitters, the nerves, everything."

"Hypothetically," says Rose slowly, "what would happen if we took the neurotransmitters from the model, and put them in a person's brain? Would it help?"

Clara frowns. "I have no idea. The neurotransmitters might work to conduct the energy safely . . . or they might not. It would be hard to tell, and the only way we'd know . . ."

". . . is by experimenting on a person. And we're not doing that," Rose sighs.

"I might be able to figure it out through pure calculations, though!" Clara says, and that glint of excitement is back. "We can study how the time energy behaves, plug it in to a few models, see what happens! That's what I like about experimental sciences."

Rose can't help but smile at her enthusiasm. "You think it'll work?"

"We'll see. You know what would be helpful, though?"

"What?"

"The Blaidd Drwg files. You took them, right?"

"Yeah, they're in the . . . they're in the Doctor's ship," says Rose. "I'll need to get a key from him."

"Why don't you do that, and I'll meet you back at the lab?"

"All right."

Rose runs back to the Doctor to get the key for the TARDIS. It's parked in the building they first landed in, pressed into the corner of the wall. It really does need a new paint job, because it looks like an abnormally blue cabinet. Rose checks behind her as she unlocks it and steps inside.

It occurs to her as she closes the door behind her that everyone in the compound besides her, Mickey, and the Doctor must think that it's a really small ship that looks like a cabinet. Quite bizarre. They must think the Doctor's mad. The idea makes her smile as she finds the bag full of records and gets them out.

She can't help but root through them until she finds the file on Melody Pond. It's even sadder to look at the little girl's face and know her entire story. But it wasn't only her. Every child in every file had a mother, a father, a sister . . . someone who cared about them, someone who would never see them again. The strong rush of hatred for the Division comes back, and Rose shoves the files away and slings the bag over her shoulder.

She's walking past the control panel when she hears it. It's like when someone whispers in your ear, and you can't quite make it out. Only there's no one standing next to her.

She spins around, looking for a source of the sound, but finds nothing. So she pauses, standing frozen and listening as hard as she can.

The whisper is a bit more distinct this time, but she's still unable to decipher. She can hear where it's coming from, though. And it sounds like it's coming from . . . below the control panel.

She gets to her knees and crawls under it. Underneath the circular controls are panels that lead into the floor. She presses her ear against them and listens.

For a few minutes, she sits there, listening. She's almost convinced it was just her imagination when she hears it again.

"Hello?" she says.

The whisper comes again, and it almost sounds like a woman's voice, and that's when the buzzing begins. Like static has overtaken her mind, it's loud and it's spreading from her cranium through her brain and it feels like her head is splitting open. Her hands fly to her ears in a desperate issue to tune the sound out, but the problem is the static is coming from inside her. It sounds like a thousand horseflies have gotten into her head and are continuously pounding on it to try to get out.

She kicks, and her foot connects with the panel and sends her away from it. The buzzing becomes quieter and finally fades. She takes her hand off of her ears cautiously, in case it returns, but there's no sign that it will.

She's lying on the floor of the TARDIS control panel and her bag is a few feet away. She picks it up and flees, ducking out of the ship and slamming the door behind her. She locks it quickly, fixes her stray hairs, and marches away.

She's definitely having a talk with the Doctor about this.


	15. Chapter 15

"So it felt like - what? A buzzing?" the Doctor asks.

"Yeah, like static in my mind, only it hurt. A lot. Like my head was being cut open with a blunt ax," Rose says.

"Ouch."

"I know. What do you think it was?"

The Doctor sighs. "Honestly, I'd tell you it was a reaction to the time energy the TARDIS runs on. It's most concentrated right under the control panel. It's the Heart of the TARDIS - it pumps time energy to all the other places, distributes it through the machine. It's also probably the most concentrated amount of time energy ever. So it can behave unpredictably."

"Well, has anything like that ever happened to you?"

"No. The panels underneath the controls are designed to protect whoever is in the TARDIS from exposure."

"But Doctor, I heard it. It sounded like it was talking. Is it possible that the TARDIS is . . . alive?"

"Of course it's possible. Like I said, time energy is unpredictable. Scientists simply don't know very much about it, me included. It could have some sort of consciousness."

They speculate a bit more before Rose has to return from her lunch break to work, but they're limited by their own lack of knowledge, which is very frustrating.

When she returns to the lab, Clara seems not to have left, but to have been running experiments through lunch.

"Rose," she says excitedly as soon as Rose comes in, "I've found something out!"

Rose rushes over to her, pausing only to shrug on her lab jacket and safety goggles (which are a bit of a joke, considering what they're working with). "What is it?"

"All right," said Clara, leading Rose over to a 3D model of a human brain which hovers between two levitation pads. Clara brought out the model that morning. It's hyper realistic, meaning the nervous system in it is actually working, sending messages to other parts of the brain. Before Rose took her lunch break, Clara attached the neurotransmitters to the brain and released the time energy on it.

Clara shows Rose the graphs on the tablet, which Rose has become a little better at reading. "What do you see?"

Rose frowns at it. "The brain's functioning normally." She puts down the tablet. "But it wasn't doing that this morning." When they first put the neurotransmitters on the brain, it began to overheat, and Clara had to shut it down before the model started melting. "What did you do?"

"I tinkered with the brain," Clara explains. "See, I realized that the time energy wasn't working well in the brain because it was too powerful. The nerves couldn't handle it and began to break down. So, I put in more nerves."

"But you can't do that to a real human brain," says Rose.

"No."

"So the time energy won't run in it."

"Well, that gave me an idea," says Clara. "This model is built on an adult's brain. If a child was exposed to the time energy when they're developing, they could actually grow more nerve cells."

"That's what Blaidd Drwg was trying to do, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, but they got it wrong. They thought developing as in, the early years of childhood. But I think it had to be earlier," explains Clara. "I think that the exposure would have to start when the child was only a fetus."

"You think it had to begin in the womb?"

"Yes!" Clara says excitedly. "By the time a child is born, its brain is too developed. It has to be when the brain first begins to form. If every cell of the fetus is exposed to just a bit more time energy than normal, the child should develop more nerves and neurotransmitters to adapt to the excess time energy! I've been doing this all day and I'm about ninety per cent certain!"

"But what about the child?" Rose asks.

Clara sighs. "See, that's the problem. The child will have developed to handle more time energy than usual. But if the child doesn't receive that time energy, they'll have too many nerves and too many neurotransmitters. See the problem?"

"What would happen then?"

"Well, I don't know for sure," says Clara, "but the child’s brain would have too many nerves, right? I think that the brain would simply not use those nerves. But then, if the child ever came into an excess of time energy, the brain would start using the extras to process it. That would affect the entire brain, which would lead to the child becoming momentarily aware of everything around them. I mean like everything, every atom and particle of energy zipping around. And if the child came upon too much time energy, the brain would start to overload, which would result in -"

"- a buzzing sound? The brain trying to process too much? Over extension?" Rose asks.

Clara frowns. "How'd you know?"

"Clara, are you quite sure that Blaidd Drwg never attempted experimentation in the womb?"

"I don't know. If you have the records, I could . . ."

Rose nods and says, "Excuse me a moment." She put the backpack of records in her room and promptly forgot to bring them to Clara. She runs out of the lab, heart pounding as she sprints to her and Clara's room, grabs the backpack, and sprints back. "Here they are!"

Clara starts to dig through them. "Blimey, that's a lot. If you could tell me what we're looking for . . ."

"Those symptoms," Rose says. "The ones you just described. They've happened to me."

"You think they experimented on you pre-birth." Clara's eyes widen with excitement.

"Yeah! And it probably wasn't just me. If we can just look at the records . . ."

They both begin to open and close records, desperately searching. Rose pulls out Melody's first, but she can't bear to look at the little girl's face again, so she places it on the counter and keeps searching. Her file is the ninth one she opens.

"Here!" She practically throws it at Clara.

Clara opens it and begins to rifle through the papers. After a minute, she nods. "Yup. IW - that means 'in womb'." She shows Rose. "Right next to 27APYR87, see? That’s shorthand. '27' is the day, 'AP' is April, 'YR' is year, and '87' means 2087. But as you can see, experimentation began -" she motions to another date "- 10SEYR86. September 10, 1986. Probably right after your mum suspected she was pregnant and went into a Healer's office to find out."

Clara turns to Rose, stunned, but Rose is already looking through other files. "Are there any more?"

Together, they tear apart the files. They find two more - LENNY ANTHONY DAVIS, who was miscarried, and JACOB LEWIS SMALLTON, who died at age two. They’re about to give up when Rose remembers Melody’s folder. She cracks it open, and sure enough . . .

"So the other three children died," Rose summarizes. "How come they died and not me?"

"Your experimentation started as soon as your mum knew she was pregnant," says Clara. "The others started a bit late - a few months into the pregnancy, second or third trimester."

"My mum would never let this happen," says Rose.

"I don't believe they told her," says Clara. "Pregnant women are always taking vitamins, going to the Healer for checkups. It wouldn't be too difficult to give her injections of time energy and say it's shots for the baby's health. And no offense, Rose, but your mum wasn't too educated, she couldn't have known it was bogus . . ."

"I feel sick," Rose snaps, throwing the folders away.

"But don't you see what this means?" Clara gasps. "Rose, you could put those neurotransmitters in your brain and work with time energy! You could -"

"- be your next big experiment," Rose says flatly. "No, thank you."

Clara pauses, and then says, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have -"

"No, it's fine. You're a scientist. You got excited."

"Still, it was rude." Clara begins to clean up the files. "Look, Rose, obviously you don't have to do anything you don't want to. You don't want to put those neurotransmitters in your brain, don't. It's none of my business to tell you otherwise."

"If we could harness the energy, we could win the war."

"What war?" Clara asks. Rose looks at her like she's crazy. "No, I’m being serious. What war exactly are you fighting here, Rose?"

"You saw the children in those files and you're asking me that? You know what they did to my mum, and to your family, and Martha's, and Donna's, and you're asking me that?"

"I'm asking you what war _you're_ fighting."

"I'm fighting because they shouldn't be able to do that," says Rose. "Not only that they shouldn't have done it. They shouldn't have been able to."

"Do you think they'd do it again? Or are you trying to punish them?"

"I think they've got too much power. I think people haven't got enough," says Rose. "I think that they can't keep doing this."

"Why can't they?" asks Clara.

"Because it's not right."

"The people aren't protesting. Well, I'm sure a few are. But there are no uprisings in the streets. No martial law. No discrimination."

"There's no choice, either!"

"Then I guess the question is how much you're willing to sacrifice to have a choice," says Clara. "Because like I said, this time energy is unpredictable. You put it in your brain, you don't know for sure what's going to happen. I'm not saying don't do it, and I'm not saying do it either. I'm asking you to think about it."

"You can't tell Saxon," says Rose.

"Of course not. Are you going to tell the Doctor?"

"Of course." Rose catches the look on Clara’s face and adds, "Why wouldn't I?"

"You can do what you want, but I've noticed . . ."

"What?"

"He has a lot of influence over you, Rose. And a lot of bias on the issue, too."

"So you think he'll sway my opinion."

"Honestly? Yes." Clara stands up. "He's a good man, and I know you two care about each other quite a bit, but you have to consider that."

* * * * *

Rose considers it. And she decides that she can make up her own mind no matter what the Doctor says to her, thank you very much.

They meet up at the tree. Or, more accurately, she finds him at the tree, reading a book, brow furrowed in concentration.

"What are you reading?"

"The complete works of Edgar Allen Poe."

"Huh. Bit morbid."

He glances up. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I just, um, I need to talk to you," she says.

He puts the book down and motions for her to sit down next to him. She does, and he slips an arm over her shoulder. "What is it?"

She leans into him as she tells him about her and Clara's discovery, and about her new found abilities.

"What are you going to do?" he asks immediately.

"I don't know yet," Rose sighs. "I don't think I'm gonna do it, though."

"Oh, good," he says in relief.

"Yeah, the energy's just so unpredictable . . ."

"And I'm not really keen on seeing you become a weapon, either."

Rose frowns. "I wouldn't be a weapon, Doctor. I'd be a soldier."

"What's the difference?"

Rose shrugs away from him, turning to stare at him. "You don't honestly mean that, do you?"

"Of course I do," the Doctor says. "What else would you call them?"

"Um . . . people?"

"Well, obviously," says the Doctor. "I'm saying that to the people who use them, they're weapons. To the governments, the politicians, they're all means to achieve an end, like a gun or a bomb."

"But they have a choice," says Rose. "They choose to fight for peace."

"Funny enough, I think there might be better ways to seek out peace than by killing people. It seems a bit counterproductive to yell 'Peace!' as you attack someone with a military."

"But if it was the only way -"

"There's always another way."

"For you, maybe," Rose says. "You're brilliant. But other people can't do what you can do." She pauses, and thinks. "What if I could use the time energy . . . but not to kill people? I mean, you said it yourself, time energy is insanely powerful. We wouldn't even have to attack them . . . if we could just show them we'd harnessed it . . ."

"Too risky," says the Doctor. "Too much that could go wrong."

"Yeah, you're right," Rose sighs. "Good thing I didn't tell Saxon."

"What are you gonna do with the research?"

"Clara and I already agreed to destroy it once this is all said and done," says Rose. "It won't guarantee that other people don't figure out how to use it, but it might at least slow them down, right?"

"Hopefully."

Rose is about to say more when Artie comes running up the hill, looking a bit out of breath. "Rose!" he gasps. "Saxon wants to see you."

Rose exchanges a panicked glance with the Doctor, who asks, "Want me to come?"

"No, it's fine," she says shakily, getting to her feet. But her heart is pounding in her ears as she follows Artie.

_Calm down,_ she tells herself firmly. _The only people who could have told Saxon are you, the Doctor, and Clara, and none of you would. It couldn't be that. And even if it was, Saxon said it himself, he's not gonna force me._

Saxon is waiting in the conference room, legs crossed, fingers pressed together, hands resting on the table. Rose slid into the seat across from him and decided to go with a tried-and-true approach of not speaking or revealing anything until she found out what he knew.

"The time energy," he says.

Darn it.

"What about it?" she says.

"Rose Tyler, you and I both know you're far too intelligent to play dumb," he says. She copies his body position and leans back in her seat, crossing her legs. He waits for her to speak, but she just raises an eyebrow, so he continues. "I know that you and Clara found a way to harness it."

"How could you know something like that?" She keeps her phrasing as neutral as possible, keeps her voice as devoid of emotion as she can.

"I know how to harness it, too," he says. "And I know that you are the key."

"Do you?"

He abandons his earlier posture and leans forward, urgent. "Rose, do you understand what this means? What we could do with this? We could win the war, bring down the government, set people free."

"Could we?"

"Please stop doing that."

She's tempted to say "stop doing what?" but refrains. He knows. There's no point in being coy. "I'm not going to put that stuff in my brain," she says flatly.

"What if we made it as safe as we could?"

"I'm not putting that stuff in my brain," she says again.

"I know, Rose, I know how scary it can be. But -"

"Please don't talk to me like I'm a child," she says. "I've thought about it. My answer is no."

"Have you? Have you thought about it? Or have you let your Doctor do that for you?"

She abandons her posture to lean in towards him, until their faces are inches away. "'My Doctor' doesn't do my thinking for me, Mr. Saxon, I do it for myself, and my answer is _no_. Will that be all?"

He makes a noise of frustration. "The Division wants us dead, Rose. All of us! They will kill us as soon as they know where we are. And they will find out where we are. They are stronger than us, in some cases smarter than us. We have very little hope left, and most of it rests on you. You can save everyone in this camp. You can save everyone living under the Division's control. You, and only you, can free us."

"You have no guarantee of that! Time energy is unpredictable, and -"

"- and it's one of the few things we have left. Unpredictable is better than hopeless, Rose!"

She doesn't have a response, so she gets up. So does he.

"Please," he says, and it's the first time she's ever heard the word fall from his lips. He sounds so earnest. She realizes that he's begging her. "Please, Rose. Just think about it."

She turns and marches out of the room, down the stairs, and out the door.

For the first time, she doesn't know what to do. She doesn't know what's right and what's wrong.

* * * * *

They celebrate her and the Doctor's birthdays together, a few days later. They don't have cake, but Clara and Craig make a delicious dinner and lots of people drop by - people Rose has never seen or talk to before, but who still want to have some amount of fun. They don't have candles, but they have food, and they sit on the floor and take turns shoving it into the other's mouth. The Doctor dabs some on her nose and she rubs it against his cheek in revenge. By the end of it, her stomach hurts from laughing and she's covered in food.

She goes to the bathroom to wash it off, silently praising the Romans in her head for figuring out how to bring running water directly to their houses. She's filling up a bath when she hears movement behind, and turns to see the Doctor resting on her bed.

"What are you doing here?" she asks. "It's late."

"Nothing," he says, getting off the bed to hover in the doorway. "Can I come in?"

"You already have."

"You know what I mean."

She laughs. "Sure."

She's washing her face and examining herself in the mirror as she does so, so she has a good view when he comes up behind her and wraps his arms around her waist, lips falling to her neck.

"This is a bit . . . spontaneous," she says as his kisses drift down her neck.

"You looked happy today," he says simply.

"I was happy."

"You were beautiful," he murmurs into her jaw. "You're always beautiful, but today, laughing and smiling . . . It almost hurt to look at you. Like looking directly into the sun."

"Look at you, the poet in disguise," she says, putting down her wash cloth and turning towards him to capture his lips with hers. "I take it Clara isn't coming back tonight?"

"She's staying at Donna's tonight," he mutters between their kisses.

"Good," says Rose, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him as tight as she can, gripping his shoulders as she kisses him over and over again. She never wants to let go.

She wakes up before him the next morning, but she doesn't mind. It means she gets to watch him sleep, face relaxed, mouth slightly open, cheek smushed into the pillow. His hair is even messier than usual, which gives her a much-needed excuse to play with it, attempting to smooth it down.

He murmurs something in his sleep, and she puts a hand over her mouth to stop the giggling from waking him. "What's that, Doctor?" she whispers.

"I'snotmine," he mutters.

"What is?"

"Rose," he sighs.

"Yes?"

"Rose."

"What is it, Doctor?"

"Tell him it's not mine."

"Okay, I'll tell him."

"Rose," he says again, and rolls over, one of his arms nearly hitting her as he does. Then, facing up at the ceiling, he smiles. For a moment, she thinks he's woken up, but he hasn't. He's just smiling.

"Rose," he says one more time, and in that moment she knows what she's going to do. What she has to do. Because it doesn't matter what's right and wrong. What matters is what saves him.

She rushes through her bath and tugs her clothes on in a hurry, leaves a note on the bedside table that she's going to work and she suggests he does the same, and runs over to headquarters. She hopes Saxon's in the same room he was in yesterday, because that's the room she goes to.

He is. He opens the door and frowns at her in confusion. "Miss Tyler?"

"Yes," she says. "The answer is yes. I'll do it."


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update, but unfortunately I might not be able to update regularly as much anymore. AP testing is about to happen which means I have study sessions almost everyday, not to mention I still need to study for the SAT and ACT, which is coming up soon, and then there's college applications to look forward to ... not to mention the schoolwork I already have, so I'm a bit swamped. I'll do my best to update as often as I can, though!

To his credit, Saxon doesn't stare at her for very long. In fact, he recovers quickly, and soon he's smiling, shaking her hand warmly and enthusiastically, and praising her.

"I knew you'd understand," he crows, almost victoriously. "I know it doesn't seem it, but this is the right thing to do, Rose. You'll be saving a lot of people."

"Whatever," says Rose. "When do we begin?"

They begin the next day, when Saxon comes down to the office to inform Clara of Rose's choice. Clara shoots Rose a loaded look but can't say anything with Saxon in the room. So she begins to prepare the neurotransmitters with great reluctance.

"We'll have to put these in your brain," she explains, "for you to be able to process the time energy."

"Are you going to have to do surgery?" asks Rose, nervous.

"In a manner of speaking, but we won't have to actually cut your head open," Clara says in a voice that is clearly meant to be reassuring. "We'll basically just have to put them in place with a needle. So we'll have to enter the cranium with -"

"Never mind, I really don't want to know the details. I'll be under the entire time, right?" Needles make Rose squeamish.

"Yeah," says Clara.

"Once the neurotransmitters are in, what's gonna happen?"

"We'll add a bit of time energy every day," says Clara, "and measure how you react to it. If you ever begin feeling overheated, or if you get headaches, or if . . . if anything happens, you have to tell us right away, okay?"

"All right," Rose agrees.

Clara waits for Saxon to go over to talk to Professor Yana before she leans in close and whispers, "Rose, are you sure about this? I mean -"

"I'm sure," Rose says. "I'll be in control the entire time, and if it goes well, I'll be saving people, right?"

Clara doesn't reply, but whispers in an even lower voice, "Have you told the Doctor about this?"

"Not yet," Rose admits.

"Rose, I think you should talk to him before -"

"Weren't you the one saying he has too much influence over me?"

"Yes, but I think -"

"It's my decision."

"Rose, he wouldn't want this. And for some valid reasons."

"Too bad. Not his head, so it's not his decision."

"That's not what I meant!" Clara exclaims, frustrated, and Saxon glances over at them. She waits for him to look away before muttering, "Rose, the Doctor cares about you. He's worried for your well being. Which makes one of you. I don't think you should do this without telling him."

"I'll tell him once it's done."

"And what if it goes wrong? What if he never gets to talk to you again?" Clara counters.

It's a fair point, but Rose thinks that if she walks out this room, if she goes to the Doctor and looks him in the eye and tells him what she's planning, she might give in and refuse to do this. She has to do it now, while she's feeling brave.

"We're just putting in the neurotransmitters today," she says. "Nothing bad will happen. I'll talk to him afterwards."

Clara looks ready to argue, but Saxon drifts back over, so she goes back to her work with her lips pursed.

"All right, we'll begin the surgery in an hour," he says, "and it should take a few hours to complete. I'd estimate four, maybe five."

Rose nods to show she understands. She doesn't trust herself to speak.

"Clara will be helping with the surgery along with Professor Yana, a team of Healers, and myself," he says. "We don't have any anesthesia, which means we'll be putting you under with morphine from opium plants. Because of this, you'll have a temporary high and hallucinate. If you're particularly susceptible to drugs, we should know, because this undiluted morphine is highly addictive."

She agreed yesterday and there's already the possibility that she'll become a morphine addict? "I don't know how susceptible to it I am," she says.

"That's all right, we can run some tests." He pauses. "But it will take a few days to get the results."

"It's fine. I'm probably not susceptible, right?" Rose asks.

"The majority of people aren't."

"Great." Rose took a deep breath. "Okay, I'm ready."

They laid her out on the table, stuck the needle in her arm, and her mind went blissfully blank.

At first, it's like drifting on a cloud. She is happy, light, free. She can see the world below her and it all seems so silly and inconsequential. She laughs in delight at how serious everyone is, how bogged down they are. They're stupid, she thinks, to try to kill each other and fight with each other when they could just take a bit of this stuff and be gone. Be happy.

She can barely even remember when she wasn't happy. There was some reason she was upset, but surely it's an unimportant one. She wonders why she was so worked up about it.

How could anybody be sad, she wondered, in a world this beautiful? There was so much happiness just waiting for them, but instead they bog themselves down. She giggles at their silliness. But she knows better. She never wants to come down from this, she thinks. She'd be happy to spend the rest of her life like this. Because without the morphine, she was unhappy and anxious. And she doesn't even remember why!

Why was she so upset? She had no need to be. Not when she could have been like this.

Why was she so upset? The question sticks in her minds, hovers there like a rain cloud on a sunny day.

As she thinks a bit more, she begins to remember. Someone died. Lots of people died, but someone really, really important was gone. She frowns, trying to concentrate through the haze and happiness. Because it _is_ important, but she doesn't know why. Something bad happened. But what?

The more she thinks, the more the happiness faze. She wracks her mind, and she begins to remember things. She remembers learning to ride a bicycle when she was five, nervous on her first day of primary school, kissing Mickey for the first time outside her apartment, her friend Isabel who moved away when she was fourteen, her first cell phone, meeting the Doctor for the first time . . .

Her mother. It was Jackie. Rose remembers, and it's like a lightening bolt through her cranium. Jackie died. Jackie was killed. For her. And she forgot. For a minute, she'd stopped caring. Rose is filled with fury at herself, fury at the Division, fury at Kovarian, and the fury works like a telescope, and she can see through the haze -

And her eyes fly open.

She's lying on a bed, her head is held down by straps, and there are people in white hospital masks and white lab coats staring down at her with tools in their hands, instruments to play her brain with.

She hears a frightened "Rose!" from Clara as she tries to move her head. She's bound very tightly to the table.

"What's going on? What's happening?" she gasps.

"More morphine! We need more morphine!" someone yells. "She woke up!"

"What's going on?" Rose repeats. "Why can't I move my -" She pauses, frozen, as the realization hits her: brain surgery. They're sticking a needle into her brain right now. If they get it off by a fraction, very bad things could happen.

"Put me back under!" she shrieks, panicked. "Put me back under!"

"It's not working!" someone exclaims.

"Make it work!" she yells. "I don't want to be awake for this!"

"Close your eyes," Clara instructs. "Try to relax for a moment. We'll put you back under . . ."

"How much time is left?" a quiet, calm voice asks. Saxon.

"Half an hour," says Clara.

"Rose, if you could just close your eyes," Saxon says, "and relax for a moment, it will all be over soon anyway."

"Knock. Me. Out," Rose growls. "I hate needles!"

"Just relax, close your eyes, and think of something else for the next thirty minutes," he suggests. "We're almost done, and the morphine doesn't appear to be working on you."

"I can't! I can't relax! Just hit me in the face or something! Knock me out!" Rose snaps.

Clara pauses, and says, "Yeah, we could do that."

"Some of the neurotransmitters haven't fused yet, Clara! We could dislodge them if we hit her!"

"Keep her head still. A well-placed blow to the side of the skull should do it," says Clara. When no one moves, she snaps, "Do what I say!"

Everyone's head swivels towards Saxon, who shrugs and says, "Fine."

Hands clasp her head, holding it in place even though it's already bound, and Clara says, "Now Rose, this will hurt a bit" and something sends a searing pain coursing through her and -

Lights out.

Her eyes flicker open for a second time, but this time she's got a headache like you wouldn't believe. Something rustles next to her and she flinches away from the sound, and gosh, were the lights always so bright?

"Sorry," says Clara, and Rose clasps her hands over her ears, because the words might as well have been a dagger to the brain.

"Sorry!" Clara whispers. "Here - take these!" She pushes some pills into Rose's hand, which Rose swallows gratefully.

"I hit you kind of hard. It's going to hurt for awhile," Clara whispers. "But the surgery went fairly well - besides you waking up, I mean."

"Why did I wake up?" Rose asks.

"It was really rather stupid of us to not think of, but opium like morphine works by sending dopamine and serotonin through the neurotransmitters of the brain," Clara explains. "We were literally adding more, and at one point there were too many neurotransmitters and they processed the morphine too quickly, which caused you to wake up."

"That was unpleasant," Rose murmurs, keeping her hands clasped over her eyes to avoid seeing the light.

"We still have two hours until we get off work, so you'll probably have recovered by then," Clara says. "We brought a mattress and pillow in here. It might be good if you rested. You're still a little out of it."

"All right," Rose mutters as Clara led her over to the mattress. She keeps her fingers over her eyes and lets Clara lower her into it and pull some blankets over her.

"I'll wake you up in two hours," Clara whispers. "Also, I'll turn off the lights in here."

"All right," Rose says into her pillow, already halfway asleep.

Clara shakes her awake after what the clock claims is two hours but what feels like a second after her eyes shut. Her head doesn't hurt as much, though there's still a dull ache.

The ache is only made worse when she and Clara step out of the lab to be greeted by an enthusiastic "Hello" from the Doctor. Rose groans and claps her hands over her ears before she can help it.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

"She's got a headache," Clara says quietly. "Well, I'll leave you two to it." Behind the Doctor's back, she mouths _Tell him!_ at Rose.

Rose winces, but she knows she has to. "Look, we've got to talk."

"All right," he agrees as they walk out of the building and chose a random street to head down. "What is it?"

There’s no point in stalling. "I said yes to the neurotransmitters," she says.

"You what?"

"I said yes," she repeats. "I know it's risky, but -"

"Risky? Going white-water rafting is risky! This fits neatly into the category of insanity!"

"I know it seems ill-advised, but -"

"Why didn't you talk to me beforehand?" He interrupts her again. "Did you just rush into it? Honestly, how much thought did you put into it before you said, 'Sure, why don't you install neurotransmitters into my mind and pump in time energy, the most dangerous and unpredictable stuff in the universe!'"

"It's done!" Rose says above him. "The neurotransmitters have been installed!" She stops him by stepping directly into his path. "Please, try to understand. If I can save everyone -"

"Save them how? You know that time energy is meant to be used as an attack, not a defense, don't you?" he snaps. "You've essentially made yourself into a weapon."

"Not a weapon. A soldier."

"You're not a soldier, Rose."

"I am now."

They stare each other down for a moment, and then she takes his hand. "I need you on my side for this. I need you to support me. It's going to be difficult."

"I'll always support you," he says. "But I won't support this."

“Why not? Just because it’s dangerous?"

"Because it's dangerous, and because you've put your safety and well being into the hands of a man that I don't trust!" he protests. "There's something off about Saxon -"

"Do you have any evidence? Or is it just because he disagrees with you?"

"It's more than that!" the Doctor says. "He's far too cavalier about this sort of thing. Death, risking lives . . . It's like he doesn't care."

"He's a general. He does what he needs to, to survive," says Rose. "And he's smart."

"So you trust him?"

"I trust that he wants to win this."

"But how?" the Doctor asks. "What has he told you?"

"We put the neurotransmitters in my brain, and then it can process more energy -"

"- and then what? How will you use it? Exactly what process will you employ to utilize the time energy?"

She pauses, mouth open. "I don't know the details -"

"- but you put it in your brain anyw -"

"Will you stop interrupting me!"

He puts both his hands on her shoulders, looks firmly into her eyes. "Rose, forget all of that. Forget everything I've said to you. And listen to this: I am asking you, I am begging you, not to do this. For me. Don't do it for me. We'll find another way. Trust me, and don't do it."

"Don't say that to me," Rose asks.

"Please, Rose."

"If you say that to me, you're making me choose. Don't do that," Rose says. "I love you, you know I do. I love you more than anyone. But I need to do this. I can save people."

"You can get revenge for your mother's death, too. That's what you want, isn't it?"

"Of course it is! But it's not the only thing!"

"This is wrong," he said flatly. "You're too intelligent to not see that."

"Would it make you feel better if you could be part of it?" Rose asks. "We could ask Saxon if he'd let you sit in."

"The only thing that would make me feel better is if you stopped this."

"Doctor, you're being childish."

"Oh, I'm being childish?"

"Why can't you trust me on this?" Rose yells.

"It's not you I don't trust."

"Trust that I know what I'm doing!" she says. "Please!" she adds quickly.

He regards her, and then says, "I want to be there for all of it. I want to see everything that happens and be a part of the decision, all right?"

"Yes, yes," she says, relieved. "That's fine."

"All right," he says, but he still looks very unhappy about the entire thing. "I'll go talk to Saxon now."

"Do you want me to come?"

"You can if you want to," he says indifferently. "Though, if you've really got a headache, you might want to rest."

"Yeah, I think I'll do that," she says. "See you later?"

"Yeah." He starts to walk away.

"Doctor!" she calls after him.

He stops, turns. "What?"

"You're not mad at me, are you?"

"No," he says. She doesn't really believe him.

"All right."

He nods shortly and strides away, leaving her alone.

* * * * *

The next day Rose walks into the lab to find Saxon and the Doctor standing next to each other, arms crossed and twin angry expressions on their face. Clearly they'd met a compromise which didn't agree with either of them. They're both pouting like children.

Clara seems determined to ignore them both. "Saxon, Yana and I designed a system for regulating the time energy," she says, pulling out the tablet to show Rose what appears to be a diagram of her brain. "See this? We can alter the positions of the neurotransmitters just slightly, which controls where time energy goes. Ideally, you'll learn how to do this yourself, but for right now, I'll be controlling it for you."

"So what are we doing?"

"We're seeing what time energy can do," says Clara. "Today, we're going to put a small amount of time energy in your head and see what happens. I hypothesize that you'll become hyper aware of the world around you but besides that, nothing much will happen."

"What if something else does happen?"

"Then we switch the position of the neurotransmitters and use needles to try to get as much time energy out as we can."

"Sounds safe."

"You knew it wasn't safe when you signed up for it."

"Fine." Rose sighs. "What do I have to do?"

"Stand still." Clara produces a long needle. "I'm going to inject this."

"Oh, gosh." Rose closes her eyes. "Needles."

"Hold still," Clara says, and Rose feels a pinprick on the side of her head. She holds still, eyes closed. "What's that feel like?" Clara asks.

At first, Rose is going to say nothing, but then she hears a buzzing. She tries to raise her head, but it's like she's frozen in place. There's stuff around her, atoms pelting her body from every angle possible, waves flying through the air at incredible speeds, and she can see all of it. She can feel the planet spinning and spinning through the air as it vaults through the universe and she can feel all of the other planets around it and she can hear the sun with all of its hydrogen and helium fusing and she can feel the energy its throwing at her and she’d never realized before what a busy place the universe is, and she wonders how she could have ever felt lonely surrounded by all of this -

\- and as soon as it started, it's gone, and she's standing in the same room. Everyone's staring at her, eyes wide. "R-Rose?" Clara asks hesitantly.

"What?" says Rose.

"Are you here with us?" the Doctor asks, stepping forward. His eyes are big with worry and his suit and hair is more messed up than usual.

"Yeah, of course." Rose looks at all of their shell-shocked faces. "Did I go somewhere?"

"Uh, yeah. You froze and you stood there for like, five hours," says Clara. She checks her watch. "Almost six. We were calling your name and shaking you, but nothing happened. We took as much of time energy as we could out after the first two hours and you still wouldn't respond."

"Almost six hours?" Rose repeats. "No. I couldn't have. I was - I wasn't even there for a second! You just put the time energy in!” She looks at the clock on the wall and it reads 4:45. Sure enough, it's been five hours and forty-two minutes since she went under.

"Where were you?" Saxon asks, voice hushed.

Rose looks at him, and he’s the only one who doesn't look worried. In fact, he looks like a kid about to open a Christmas present.

"Everywhere," she says.


	17. Chapter 17

"This time," says Clara, "we're going to be focusing on not going into a catatonic state for six hours."

"Good plan," says Rose. "How exactly are we going to do that?"

Clara sits Rose down and places a board game in front of her.

"'Sorry'? Really?" Rose asks in disbelief.

"It's an experimental phase," Clara says. "I'll be blue."

Rose chooses red and sets her pieces in. The Doctor chooses green. They don't get a fourth player because none of them really want to ask Saxon to play.

They start the game before they put the time energy in, and by the time they actually start the injections Rose has already knocked the Doctor off the board and then been Sorry-ed by him in revenge. "I'll get you," she vows as the needles slip into her head and back out. She draws a five and adds, "Next time."

The buzzing starts up, loud and demanding to be heard, but she pushes it away impatiently because Clara just got a backwards four which puts her exactly two spaces away from her safety zone and both the Doctor and Rose have some serious catching up to do. Rose still has three pieces in her "start" and she's smelling a comeback.

"Sorry!" the Doctor crows as he knocks Clara’s piece off.

"Oh, you'll be sorry, all right," Clara growls, hand flying for the deck.

Rose draws a three. "I have three pieces in my start still," she announces. "I'm the worst in the game."

"That _is_ pretty pathetic," the Doctor agrees.

"Oh, can it."

As luck would have it, Clara draws a "Sorry" as well and proceeds to knock Rose's only piece off the board. Rose glares at Clara's piece, and it explodes into dust.

"Oh my gosh!" Clara screams, jumping back. She turns, eyes wide, to Rose. "Did you do that?"

"I . . . did I? I didn't mean to," says Rose, startled.

The Doctor points to one of his pieces. "Do it again."

"I don't think I can. I don't even know what I did the first time."

"Just try it."

Rose stares at the piece for a moment, brow furrowed in deep concentration. Nothing happens. After a moment, she says, "It's not going to work. And I feel stupid."

"Do you hear the buzzing?"

"A little, in the back of my head. But not as much as yesterday."

"Maybe you expelled some of it!" Clara exclaims, jumping to her feet.

"It was anger that triggered it," the Doctor adds.

"'Anger' is a strong word," Rose interjects. "I was a bit irritated."

"Strong emotions?"

"Heated emotions. I doubt something would explode if she was feeling very sad."

"She says she didn't mean to, but part of her subconscious must have willed it . . ."

"If the time energy was searching for an outlet . . ."

"I'm right here!" Rose exclaims, and a beaker bursts on the counter.

The Doctor regards the broken glass and says, "Okay, so maybe it's just a random expulsion of time energy."

"But your mind must be directing it in some way," Clara says. "You were angry at us for ignoring you, but you didn't blow us up."

"Thanks for that, by the way."

"No problem," Rose says.

"How's your head?"

"Fine. Actually, it feels clearer."

"That makes sense," says the Doctor. "The energy is being shot from your mind like a bullet from a gun. You just have to work on your aim."

"And pulling the trigger!" Clara explains. "Though that might be a simple exercise in controlling your emotions."

"Good luck with that."

"Oi!"

"We'll have to report to Saxon," Clara adds as an afterthought.

"Do we? Do we have to?"

"Yes!"

The Doctor sighs. "All right, you go do that. I'm going to see if I can't get Rose to blow up anything else."

"You're on my list," says Rose, smiling at him. "You'll never be able to avoid taking out the trash, because if you do - BOOM!" She mimes something blowing up.

"Charming."

"Thank you."

Clara makes her exit and Rose walks to stand next to the Doctor. "Are you mad at me?" she asks for a second time.

"You've asked me that before."

"You've lied to me before."

"I'm mad at everything in general."

"And I'm included in that."

"A bit," the Doctor admits.

"I can live with that."

"Rose?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you promise me something?"

"What?"

"When this is all said and done . . . when the war's over and the Division's gone . . . can you stop this? Take those neurotransmitters out and never put that time energy in your body again."

"Of course," Rose says, surprised. "What do you think I was planning to do?"

"You promise?"

"Yes, I promise. Duh," Rose teases. "That's been the plan all along, dumbo."

"I just wanted to make sure."

The door opens before Rose can respond, and Saxon and Clara walk through it. Saxon's face is lit up with joy, especially when he takes in the glass shards littering the counter and floors. "Well done, Rose!" he crows. "I knew you could do it!"

"Do what, blow up a beaker?" the Doctor asks.

"Control her powers!" Saxon says.

"This just in - apparently blowing up a beaker constitutes as 'controlling yourself' now," the Doctor mutters, earning him a dark look from Saxon.

"I don't completely have it under control," Rose says quickly, so as to avoid conflict.

"Still, a massive improvement, and in only twenty-four hours!" Saxon says. "If you continue at this rate, the Division will fall by the end of the week."

The Doctor rolls his eyes and looks away.

* * * * *

Amelia Pond is insane. This Rose decides when the red headed woman bursts into the dining hall wearing nothing but a green bathrobe and brandishing a hairbrush.

"Everyone out of my way!" she yells. "I am armed and dangerous -" she waves the hairbrush threateningly "- and really cross!"

Clara grabs Rose's arm and pulls her out of the way. "Don't want to get caught in that."

Too late. Amy is already barreling towards them. "Rose Tyler! Where the hell is that bloody Doctor of yours?"

"Um, he's, uh -"

"Oh, never mind!" Amy cuts her off. "I need to talk to him right away. It's urgent."

"I'm sure he'll come down for supper soon," Clara puts in.

"Great, well if he could have come down ten minutes ago, that would be superb."

"I'll go see if I can't find him," Rose says.

"But Rose, you haven't had supper yet."

"I'm not hungry." Rose hands her cup to Clara. "Are you going to be here, Amy?"

Amy considers her appearance, then says, "I suppose I should get dressed first, but after that, yes."

"Great, I'll bring him here when I find him."

Rose assumes Amy's already checked the Doctor's room, so she heads to the only other place she can think of - the TARDIS.

"Doctor?" she calls as she enters the building, glancing around. "Are you in -"

She draws up short, her breath leaving her arms. The TARDIS is gone. She curses loudly and rushes through the room, searching for it, praying that he just parked it somewhere else. But no, it's definitely missing.

"Bloody hell!" she swore. "You idiot, you just had to take off, didn't you, how am I suppose to explain this to them, they'll know you didn't just fly off you stupid nincompoop -"

She continues her rant until she realizes that she probably looks insane, angrily muttering to herself in an empty room. She kicks the spot where the TARDIS had been. "Idiot!" she says again.

What is she supposed to tell Amy? What if someone notices the TARDIS is missing and starts asking questions? When he returns, she's going to -

When he returns.

For the second time in five minutes, she feels like the wind's been knocked out of her. It's not _when_ he returns, it's _if_ he returns. He wouldn't be so careless, she thinks. He'd plan for not getting caught if he'd planned for coming back. But taking off in the TARDIS without any sort of warning doesn't seem indicative of a plan to return.

Rose sprints to the Doctor's room, taking the stairs two at a time. She throws the door open and -

"Rose!" Mickey's standing buck naked and soaking wet, having just gotten out of the bathtub.

"Sorry, sorry!" Rose slaps her hand over her eyes. "Have you seen the Doc -"

"Get out of here!"

"Sorry!" Rose closes the door and yells through it, "It's not like I haven't seen it before, Mickey!"

"Shut up, Rose! I haven't seen your Doctor!" Mickey yells back. "You're the second person who's come up here demanding to see him!"

"Are his things still in there?"

"What do you mean, are his things still in here? Why wouldn't they be?"

"So they are, then!"

"Yeah, of course they are, but why wouldn't they be?"

"Are you decent yet?"

"Well, I've got my pants on, if that's what you mean."

"Brilliant." Rose yanks open the door, steps in, and shuts it behind her. Mickey's pulling his trousers on and he's still shirtless. He gives an indignant yelp, but she really can't care less. "Mickey, the TARDIS is missing."

"You think he took it?" Mickey shrugs his shirt on.

"Yeah, who else could it be?"

"You asked if his stuff was here." Mickey motions to the closet. "It still is. I've never seen that many pinstripe suits in my life. You think he clones them?"

"I wouldn't put it past him."

"That's a hell of a fashion statement." Mickey folds his arms and stares Rose down. "You thought he wasn't coming back."

"I didn't -"

"Yes, you did. You thought he'd gone off and left you behind."

"He wouldn't -"

"But you worried he had."

"For a few minutes," Rose admits.

"You don't trust him."

"Of course I trust him!"

"Not enough. You don't trust him to stay with you," says Mickey.

"I'm just -" Rose sighs. "He's been mad at me lately, Mickey. Really distant, ever since I said yes to Saxon."

"Said yes to Saxon?" Mickey frowns at her. "Yes to what?"

"Yes to ... you don't know?"

"Know what?" Mickey's eyes widened. "Oh my God, did you get it on with Saxon?"

"No!" Rose yells. "I - you really don't know?"

"Don't. Know. What?" Mickey hisses.

"I -" Rose hesitates. "I'm not sure if I'm supposed to tell you."

"Well, tough, because you're not gonna get away with not telling me now."

"Saxon's been experimenting on my brain," Rose admits.

"He's been - what?"

"I gave him permission - look, it's a long story, but basically, when I was a kid, some people experimented on my mind with time energy, and now we're experimenting on it again in the hopes of making it a weapon."

"You want to be a weapon?" Mickey asks.

"No, the time energy would be the weapon -"

"And it's in your head, therefore, you're the weapon."

"It's more complicated than that."

"Right, I forgot. Mickey the Idiot."

"That's not it!" Rose snaps. "Look, you should ask Martha about it."

"I don't need to," Mickey says. "That's your business, not mine. If you want to turn yourself into some sort of superweapon, be my guest. Just don't lie or pretend and say that's not what you're doing. Maybe you can lie to your Doctor, but I know you better than that."

"Mickey, if we can win the war, it's worth it!"

"Sure, okay. Whatever," Mickey says. He scoffs and mutters, "'We'."

"If the Doctor comes back, tell him to come find me."

"What are you going to tell everyone, if they start asking questions?"

"I don't know yet. Hopefully, he'll be back soon and I won't have to say anything at all."

* * * * *

The Doctor's not back by the next morning.

Rose prays no one will ask her, but no such luck. As soon as she steps into the lab and sees the look on Saxon's face, she knows she's going to have to lie.

"Rose, have you seen the Doctor recently?" Saxon asks.

"Yeah, I saw him last night. Why?" Rose asks.

"What time, exactly?"

"Uh, I'm not sure. Late, I suppose. It was a little while after supper," she says. "Why?"

"We haven't seen him since yesterday morning, when you blew up the beakers," says Saxon. "We also haven't seen his ship. It's not in it's regular place."

"Yeah, some circuits blew on it," Rose says. "He moved it someplace else to fix it, I'm pretty sure. Have you checked the mechanic zones?"

Saxon fidgets, and Rose has to remind herself not to cheer. Gotcha.

"Frankly, Rose, we're a bit worried about him," says Saxon. "He's been openly defiant of our plans since the beginning, but he hasn't shown up to his assigned job today. If we want to keep things running smoothly, there needs to be order."

"I'll let him know."

"Please do." Saxon claps his hands together. "Now, on to more pressing things."

"More pressing things?"

"I'd like to show you something," Saxon says, and motions to the lab counter behind him. On it sits what looks like a pair of headphones - only the earbuds are needles. The headphones are attached to a small, black box with blinking lights.

"Professor Yana has been working on this for a very long time," says Saxon, "so I think I'll let him explain." He extended an arm to Yana.

"I call it the Box," says Yana.

_How creative,_ thinks Rose.

"I understand it's difficult for you to control of the time energy. I believe this will help," he continues. "The needles inject a serum which interacts directly with the newly installed neurotransmitters. It shifts their position slightly, not very much, but enough for us to direct the flow of time energy. We would inject the needles into you and the wireless box would transmit the signal to our tablet. We could then control the positions from a remote location."

"So you'd be controlling what was in my head," Rose says.

"We'd be controlling the time energy -"

"- which is in my head, so you'd be controlling my head. You'd be able to change my brain with your box!"

"You already agreed to let us alter your brain," Saxon points out. "What do you think we were doing before, with the time energy?"

"No," Rose snaps. "No, you're not putting that machine in me. No way."

"Rose, be reasonable -"

"No!" Rose yells. "No, I'm not going to - to be your weapon! I want to control what's happening in my head. You don't get to do that."

"We're just trying to help -"

"You're trying to control me. I'm not some nuke and I won't make myself into one, I don't care how desperate you are to win this bloody war!"

"Fine!" Saxon raises his hands in surrender. "Rose, we would never force you to do something you didn't feel comfortable doing. We'll find another way."

Rose takes a deep breath. "Thank you."

Saxon sighs and motions to Yana. "Will you remove the machine, please?"

Yana nods, looking slightly disappointed, and moves forward.

Rose sees the needle in his hand, but her brain doesn't process what's happening until Yana grabs her. She twists away, arms going up in defense, but it's already pierced a vein in her neck. Immediately, her vision goes hazy. "What -" she begins to ask, but that’s as far as she gets before her legs give up.

"Don't let her hit her head," Saxon says, sounding bored. "And put her up on that table."

The last thing she sees is Professor Yana's face looming over her before she fades to black.


End file.
